Marriage

August 14, 2012

I remain convinced that the politicization of sexual preferences, stances, orientations, flirtations & confusions will come back to bite citizens in the ass, and not the friendly way. That is precisely because I find very little LGBT activism that isn't oppositional. With all due respect, the *dog* is rather tired of the condescending *tail*.

It seems to me that too many political activists will not parse the difference between 'without regard to sexual orientation' and 'with special regard to sexual orientation' and spend billions of calories trying to define that precise weight of 'special'. The majority of such activists find repose in a general state of outrage, offense and dismay with those who neglect to 'get it'.

In the parallel of race, I coined the term 'six pounds of racism' and asked how healthy are those who can bear that burden. It is impossible to quantify six pounds of racism (in either old or new money) which is precisely the point. It depends. Society should be robust enough to handle any infinity of gradations of 'it depends', but politics and law tend more heavily towards GS-scales. Who here is prepared to face the charge of misdemeanor homophobia or the ramping up of that division of Homeland Security?

Those of us who are not impressed with sexual acrobatics are aware of what you wish for. How wary are the wishers?

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Concern is the respectful sympathy to those who face the prospect of danger.

July 27, 2012

In the news, activists for the cause of gay-marriage have struck what they hope to be a steamrolling blow to the fast food business Chick-fil-A. It starts with the same standard deception used countless times before which is to implicate homophobia in any outspoken defense of marriage. Basically if you don't love it, you must hate and fear it. The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway identifies the deceptions of CNN's reporter. I will report the lengthy details here:

But Terry Mattingly at the website GetReligion (where I am an occasional contributor) notes that if you look at the original context of the interview, Cathy wasn't asked specifically asked about gay marriage nor did he say anything about it. Here's the actual interview CNN and others cited from the Biblical Recorder and that was carried by the Baptist Press:

“We don’t claim to be a Christian business,” Cathy told the Biblical Recorder in a recent visit to North Carolina. He attended a business leadership conference many years ago where he heard Christian businessman Fred Roach say, “There is no such thing as a Christian business.”

“That got my attention,” Cathy said. Roach went on to say, “Christ never died for a corporation. He died for you and me.”

“In that spirit … [Christianity] is about a personal relationship. Companies are not lost or saved, but certainly individuals are,” Cathy added. “But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles. So that is what we claim to be. [We are] based on biblical principles, asking God and pleading with God to give us wisdom on decisions we make about people and the programs and partnerships we have. And He has blessed us.”

And here's what Cathy says about marriage:

The company invests in Christian growth and ministry through its WinShape Foundation (WinShape.com). The name comes from the idea of shaping people to be winners. It began as a college scholarship and expanded to a foster care program, an international ministry, and a conference and retreat center modeled after the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove.

“That morphed into a marriage program in conjunction with national marriage ministries,” Cathy added.

Some have opposed the company’s support of the traditional family. “Well, guilty as charged,” said Cathy when asked about the company’s position. “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. …

“We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized. “We intend to stay the course,” he said. “We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”

There are a number of falsehoods animating certain activists for gay marriage:

Chick-fil-A considers itself as a corporate agent of Christian dogma

Defense of marriage is anti-gay

Chick-fil-A is anti-gay

That if an individual or company has anti-gay sentiments, that it will necessarily discriminate illegally.

That any company with anti-gay sentiments can be legally enjoined from doing business in a city.

These falsehoods should, by any reasonable standard, wreck the gay marriage activist politicking, but stranger travesties have happened. The very fact that such lies and innuendo have survived are a testament to how compelling the sentiment is in support of the destruction of Chick-fil-A and all that it represents in the minds of these activists.

In the past, I've not bothered with much mockery of activists for the cause of gay marriage, but this kind of politics is ridiculous in the extreme. I may have too many people in my circles who say too many foolish things, but I am taking steps to distance myself from their breath. And so falls away my respect for the Gay Mafia, their populist deceptions and their wag the dog inversion of common sense.

May 09, 2012

It has been an Orwellian political season during the current Administration. And now I wonder exactly which way the President threads this new needle. You see he campaigned to one of his few credits that a Marriage is between a man and a woman. Today, this is what he's saying.

I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don't ask, don't tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.

Smarmy and political yes, but mostly slimy, because it basically walks directly into the rhetorical truck of the redefinition of marriage - the conservative peeve. North Carolina was on background in this context wrong to categorically ban civil union on an equal rights basis, and I suppose a federal case will have to be made, again. On the other hand, nobody just happens to live in North Carolina, and its sovereignty cannot be denied.

I reiterate my position. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Civil union should be legal. States should not recognize anything but all civil unions, encompassing common law, religiously ordained and the recent twists with regard to anything that amounts to a civil right.

July 11, 2011

This controversy is starting to remind me of my defense of Bill Bennett. Let's see if the haters can sustain their smears.

Candidate Bachmann got her sentence about black marriage during slavery times from a 72 page document entitled The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans published in 2005 by The Institute for American Values.

Here follows the summary of the details.

Four Major Questions

1. What are the economic, psychosocial, and health-related consequences of marriage for African American men, women, and children?

2. Do the consequences of marriage differ for Blacks and Whites?

3. If racial differences exist, what explains these differences?

4. What are the policy implications of these findings?

To answer these questions, we conducted a comprehensive review of scholarly articles, reports, and books focusing in part on the consequences of marriage for African Americans published from 1990 through 2004. We also conducted new research specifically for this report, using survey data collected from 1973 through 2002 by the American General Social Surveys, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Based on this review of the academic literature and our new research, we present the following ten major findings.

Ten Major Findings

1. Marriage clearly appears to promote the economic, social, familial, and psychological well-being of African American men and women. Even when studies control for a wide range of variables, they consistently find that married Black adults, compared to those who are unmarried, have more income, are less likely to face poverty, and are more likely to be happy. Marriage also appears to promote bet- ter family functioning for African Americans. At the same time, the evidence generally suggests that Black adults derive little benefit from marriage in terms of physical health.

2. While both Black men and Black women receive a marriage premium, this premium in most cases appears to be larger for men. Put a bit differently, Black women overall seem to receive less benefit from marriage than do Black men. This gender gap is especially pronounced in the areas of family life and physical health. In fact, married Black women actually report poorer health than do unmarried Black women. The one exception to this pattern is in the economic domain, where Black men and women appear to benefit comparably from marriage.

3. Economically, marriage appears to benefit Blacks more than Whites. In part because marriage often means an additional wage earner for the family, and in part because marriage typically increases the income and the economic productivity of individuals, married-couple Black families have far more income, and are far less likely to live in poverty, than other Black families. This economic premium stem- ming from marriage is comparably larger for Blacks than for Whites. In general, marriage appears to contribute greatly to the economic well-being of African American families.

4. Overall, Black women appear to benefit from marriage substantially less than do White women. By contrast, the differences in the benefit from marriage between Black men and White men appear in most cases to be minimal.

5. Black-White differences in marital quality seem to constitute an important reason why Black adults, and particularly Black women, typically benefit less from marriage than do Whites. On average, the marriages of Whites appear to be marked by more happiness and less conflict than those of African Americans. The lower average quality of African American marriages, in turn, seems to reduce the benefits to adults that those marriages might otherwise yield. In our analysis of data from the General Social Surveys, we find that controlling for marital quality signifi- cantly reduces the Black-White gap in the estimated benefits of marriage.

6. Parental marriage produces important benefits for African American children. Black children of married parents typically receive better parenting, are less delinquent, have fewer behavioral problems, have higher self-esteem, are more likely to delay sexual activity, and have moderately better educational outcomes. Because many of the relevant studies on child outcomes employ comprehensive controls, there is strong reason to believe that these findings reflect more than mere correlations. Marriage itself appears to be generating strong positive results for African American children. At the same time, marriage may have little or no impact on school dropout and drug use among Black adolescents.

7. Parental marriage appears to be especially important for the well-being of young African American males. In areas including parental support, delinquency, self-esteem, and school performance, having one’s father in the home, and particularly one’s married father, appears to be a crucial determinant of better outcomes for young Black males. When viewed alongside our other finding regarding the larger marriage premium for Black men, as compared to Black women, this finding suggests that mar- riage is particularly important for African American males at all stages of the life cycle.

8. In some areas, Black children seem to benefit more from parental marriage than do White children, whereas in other areas, the reverse is true. Regarding both levels of parental support and the risks of delinquency, African American children seem to benefit more from parental marriage than do White children. Yet regarding educational performance, early sexual activity, substance use, and possibly high school completion, White children appear to derive greater benefits from parental marriage than do their African American peers.

9. The reasons for some apparent racial differences in the consequences of marriage for children are not clear, and further research in this area is needed. One possibility is that studies need more carefully to distinguish the effects of parental non-marriage on Black sons as compared to Black daughters, since the impact on boys appears to be greater than the impact on girls. Another, related possibility is that the institutional contexts and cultural norms affecting African American children are in some respects distinctive, thus making it harder for researchers to tease out the specific effects of marriage and non-marriage when it comes to Black-White differences in child outcomes.

10. For policy makers who care about Black America, marriage matters. Public and private sector policies aimed at increasing marriage rates among African Americans, and particularly policies aimed at increasing the number and proportion of high quality Black marriages, are important strategies for improving the well-being of African Americans and for strengthening civil society.

In the end, you might still conclude that Bachmann is a 'flake', but if so, why would she cite this study?

December 25, 2010

I read somewhere that Christmas isn't mandated by the Church as a high holiday. It's truly not a solemn occasion. If you think about that which might be a co-opted pagan celebration, this one has probably been the one that most often does not use Christian symbols. Happy Birthday Jesus doesn't quite fit so much as Happy Birthday Baby Jesus. And so the word Joy best describes what this time of year is all about. Joy to the World.

It's not actually even a message we Christians are likely to be known for. There's always an evangelical hook in there somewhere - or for me in my blend, a Jesuit mind trick. Proper Christianity challenges your mind and soul, but in late December the challenges are more about getting a parking space and all other sorts of preparation for joyous celebration. This year we got duck.

Right now, everything is as perfect as it gets. All the family phone calls have been made and all the news is good. People are healthy and in good spirits. Them that had no jobs, now got jobs. Some travelling has been done and old faces have been seen, warm embraces had in defiance of winter and quiet talk over hot drinks have given us another chance to pause, smiling and look down at the table for that moment when we say to ourselves nodding, "that's really good". The confessions are done as well. People like to come clean around this time of year. According to the guy on the radio, almost nobody breaks up on Christmas Day, but starting at Black Friday if your affair is in jeopardy, be prepared to handle the truth. The truth is that we know and we admit it finally, that human beings can be awesome, and sometimes we have to just let go of our fears and tell the honest truth. We play that game when the family is in a good mood and as parents we promise to forgive confessions of mischief - we call it BOL, for blurt out loud. Blurt. That's a good and giggly word. You just can't wait to talk about everything so that you can tell your good news, and feel good and prepare for the joy.

There's a kind of inevitability about Christmas joy. This year it was a long time coming. As it turns out, I'm between jobs and have had lots of time to think about other things, a good seven week sabbatical it turns out. Christmas couldn't sneak up on me this time; it felt like it took forever to get here. I started singing carols in public last week, and although I didn't burn a CD for the car, I did have it on the home system. The first thing I did yesterday morning was I listened to several renditions of O Holy Night. Whitney Houston, Celtic Woman, Celine Dion, Susan Boyle, Charlotte Church, Mariah Carey, Carrie Underwood, NSync, Alicia Keyes, another Mariah Carey version. Right there in bed on my iPhone via YouTube. No matter how many times I listened to it, I still love the song. I still don't know all the words, but man when they get to the 'fall on your knees' part, it just melts me when they do it right. And yeah I have to say, Mariah does it best. You know the words are coming, and it still gets you in the gut. Advent. What a wonderful word.

We're at that family age with three teenagers. They know what they want, we know what to get them. It's wonderful watching all the bubbly subterfuge as we raid the bag of ribbons and wrapping paper. Everybody snatchs the roll of scotch tape from my desk and scampers off to their rooms to wrap another gift. We color code the sticky bows, if it's red it's mine. It seemed to take almost no time at all to get the tree and decorate it and now it's surrounded. There have been sleepovers and videogame parties. We baked cookies and made many runs to the stores.

.and that's all I'm writing this morning...

Merry Christmas, and may your thoughts be more coherent and complete than mine. Pass the eggnog.

December 03, 2010

So I was looking to make a new avatar of myself and I found an anime site with ads for something I haven't seen before. It was Victoria Secret -style wedding dress models. Wowsers. So 'Wedding Porn' is the first thing that came to my mind. Wouldn't that be something? If you think about it for a while, when is the last time you saw any pop culture marketing or style that made something very attractive and sexy about a woman in a wedding dress? Maybe you and I don't watch the same channels, but I can't recall it ever. Not even when I used to watch House of Style with Cindy Crawford on MTV many years ago.

A search of that term took me to the Offbeat Bride blog where I happened upon a very grownup and obvious patch of text:

I think wedding rings on a dude (especially your own dude) are sexy! Every time I saw that flash of metal on his finger I gave me a thrill — it's all sexy "grown up" of him.

But when I stepped back and looked at the reality of the situation I saw that, honestly, that ring spent more time spinning on the table in front of him, or in his mouth, than on his finger. And I just saw how uncomfortable it made him. He really HATES wearing jewelry, and he complained that the air conditioning in the recording studio where he works made the ring so cold that his finger ached.

Now, I could've bitched and nagged and guilted my husband into just accepting his be-ringed fate, but I had realize that, even though that ring gave me a thrill, it's not at allworth his discomfort for one minute.

And what's the point of it really? 'It's symbol to show that he's devoted and faithful to me,' is what I came up with. But isn't it okay that the symbol just be that he freaking MARRIED ME!? I mean, what more do I need? This man stood in front of family, friends, and a few complete strangers, and exchanged vows with me — do I need more than THAT? And the answer was, obviously, no. There doesn't need to be a physical symbol when his vows alone and my trust in him are enough to show me (and everyone else?) that he is devoted and faithful to me.

So, no, he doesn't wear a ring, and I'm okay with it. But I'll keep wearing mine because I think it's purrrrty.

I have that kind of weird love hate relationship with my wedding ring, which is btw my second replacement. It's my favorite because it is comfortable. Like Muslims, I have a thing against wearing gold. For me it's mostly aesthetic - say 65% but the other 35% doesn't like the flash at all. I do have a negative connotation with wearing the stuff. I don't suppose I'd do very well in India on that score. This ring I have now is fat and heavy brushed tungsten steel. It's very comfortable, but. I have this thing against the marks rings leave on my fingers. I hate the greasy tan line it creates.

I love wearing my ring when I'm dressed to impress and I consider it in the context of the watch I'm wearing. But for sports or camping, it has got to come off. On the whole, I consider my wedding band much more in the context of what it is as jewelry than what it represents as a symbol of the Sacrament. I do like, and have said, that because of its composition it's like my Marriage, unglamorous and unbreakable, but that's about it. It physically looks nothing like the one I put on my finger 16 years ago that I lost on a ski trip in 2000. It does resemble the first replacement which was a very traditional fat silver band that I kinda ruined opening a bottle of beer. Yeah, I know.

Isn't it interesting how typical, malleable and shallow many of these symbols of marriage are? They could be done a lot better if people have any imagination.

November 21, 2010

If Spence were over here on a regular basis, I'd have to ask him what he knows about research done on family formation. I imagine that's what the academics would call it - but Freakonomically - how do people hook up? What is the mating ritual? What are the expectations of sex and consequences?

I've had a feudal streak running through my attitudes for several years for a number of reasons. One of them is that I expect to learn from the narratives of kings and royalty. It's a constant through a great deal of recorded human history, and unlike the more modern Materialism, it puts more onus on the head of the monarch. Shakespeare's tragedies are great because of what happens to individuals, not what happens to societies. They are thus instructive to individuals. My interpretation of my American heritage is that I get to be an individual, a king perhaps. So I treat my family as royalty and retain a code of honor for it as well as seek to establish relations and politics through it as a king would. I would sooner marry off a daughter to a more powerful king than have her obtain a scholarship from the government, if you can catch that drift.

So my obtuse curiosity today goes into this controversial direction which evoke questions of chastity belts and betrothals in the context of modern arrangements which might fall under the heading of 'black culture'. My reaction is that there's a population out there that does not, but desperately needs to think of itself in royal terms, and the large number of them that are failing are piling up the abortion statistic. Now let me come at it from the positive angle.

Yesterday as I left the house Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" in my head. I imagined in my bio-pic that there must be a scene of me learning to master the Cha-Cha to this song. The Cha-Cha is, was and will always be to my generation of black Americans a bourgie signifier of momentous import. When I think about my close friends from high school, it was something we all pretty much shared in common. We were generally from the black upper classes and when we went to party, we showed up to do this sophisticated dance to those songs for which it was appropriate. A Soul Train line was not out of the question, but it tended to be more vulgar. Straight out Pop-Locking and doing the Robot was declasse. Cool, but too much enthusiasm for such ostentation was frowned upon. Besides, it was for show-offs and the ladies didn't particularly like to get 'turned out' on the dance floor. I could unpack all of this inside baseball terminology at some later date. The point is that the Cha-Cha, not to be confused with today's vulger Cha-Cha Slide, the black equivalent of Country line dancing and heir to the disco era Hustle, was the dance for ladies and gentlemen of suave black sophistication.

Whiteboys don't dance.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm a great sociologist here, which is why I would need somebody like Spence to fill in the blanks of what I understand implicitly about the difference between socialization rituals. The tangents of those rituals, vis a vis, what is called 'dating' and what the expectations are for meeting families, pre-marital and other sexual rules all add up to something. And while I'm not obsessed with what people do, Cobb's Rule #2 is There is Marriage and there is everything else and everything else doesn't count. I'm coming from a social context in which fidelity, chastity and modesty are prized. I'm not saying all those dudes in the big afros and polyester bellbottoms getting funky on that Soul Train line are all pimps, but I wouldn't be far off in suggesting that there's a popular pimp thread in some of today's black American music. It's correlated. And the countercultural revolution is correlated. And the sexual revolution is correlated. And all of these peasant rebellions from the chivalrous codes of the Old School are feeding those abortions. As I said, my parents and my aunts and uncles were not born in hospitals. They were born at home by midwives and relatives. That entire culture is lost - dead, gone, in one generation. Black Americans didn't used to go to hospitals for that industry now called Ob-Gyn. Now there are evident unborn millions that go in but don't come out.

In 1976 we had dancing as teens. We had not only the Cha-Cha, but slow dancing - a way to exercise some intimacy in public, to get that sliver of sexual satisfaction which is about all a modest teen can handle out there in the cultural center of gravity called the dance floor. A vertical grind was about as far as you could push the social envelope, and that was good. Kids today get blowjobs in bathrooms and can legally get all sorts of sexual swag without parental consent. Not that it didn't happen then, but it's a far, far more permissive and sexually explicit society now than it was back then. And so I wondered yesterday, listening to Marvin Gaye, wouldn't it be better if kids today could slow dance in confidence.

There is, hidden in that simple statistic, no clue as to whether that abortion figure is going up or down. It's all too aggregated for nuance. But maybe that's the stark way we ought to look at this problem. It's not all vague and iffy like global warming. It's not subject to legal and economic chicanery like collateralized debt obligations and deficit spending. It's something families can, should and do control.

As part of the Old School, one of the things I have learned is the limited extent of my ambit. The dangerous ambitions of the Talented Tenth and their race raising aims resulted in any number of foolish ideas being taken for granted, one being that the upper middle class could make the poor into the middle class. Another is the kind of behavioral attitude I myself employ in essays such as this when I'm not expert at all. But I've been conditioned to care and to think my small efforts can contribute to a greater understanding which leveraged by political unity can result in Progressive policy. I know better than to expect truly progressive results from such a process, but the habit dies hard, and the caring has not been sublimed. The bare fact remains out there. There are 13 millions more who might have made a proper difference. How have we gotten so pathologically Malthusian?

October 10, 2010

Kali Tal was the first intellect online who grasped my attention and reached out to me personally when I was looking at the intersection of race, identity and cyber presence. I have since discussed any number of subject tangential to identity and the metaphysics of online discourse with her. I have always found her to be a good sounding board and sometimes bullseye for that path which I estimate I might have taken were I convinced that our future is best defined by the Progressive politics. In that, we share a classic liberal optimism for objective investigation of what's wrong and scientific discipline in determining how best to solve problems in society. More importantly we share a skepticism of wishful thinking and deceptive populism that informs most of the talking points of America political debate. I welcome her here to Cobb to discuss at some length the issues that face America with regard to its ideas about women, sexuality, the family, marriage how that coalesces into something beyond common sense in our culture and politics.

I started this debate, which I now hope to rescue from the format and control of Facebook, with a pique about the apparent defection of Rebecca Walker from the anti-family provocations of her famous and feminist mother Alice Walker. The younger Walker, a (former?) lesbian mother living with the father of her young son, rejoices in the joys of motherhood much to the dismay and consternation of the elder who refuses to speak to her daughter or even see her now five year old grandchild. Rebecca now stands in rebuke to that which has passed as good advice to women to which I say bravo.

My fundamental issue is with a raft of ideas which could roughly be called feminist that have arisen to redefine what a family unit is or should be. This arises out of my long standing rejection of the counter-cultural aspects of 'The Sixties' which have been, irrevocably it seems, linked to the liberation of 'people of color', the Civil Rights Movement and the general idea of liberty and progress. I stand with a varied body of critics on the Right who take issues and potshots from the deep trenches of the Culture Wars initiated in the mid 80s around the same time as the term 'African-American' was born and the inception of multiculturalism.

I find an irascible fetishistic regard for 'difference' as yet another symptom of shallow identity politics and an ever-broadening definition of 'rights' which have no right being called rights, but are ultimately anti-social privileges being demanded by a movement that seeks to dominate moral discourse and quell dissent. I see this as part an parcel of an insatiable demand for all the 'progress' social scientists can promise at a pace which is unsustainable and destabilizing to American society. There is no better example of this than the unequivocal demand for the redefinition of marriage consequent with the rejection of civil union and the utter contempt with which religious traditions are held who seek to protect their own ways. But while that matter boils on the front burner, what has been baking for years are deeper questions about the American family and what our nation (of laws) and society (of men) can and should do to protect and sustain it.

My critical stance which I am perfectly comfortable as calling 'conservative' or 'Right' is only informed by not defined by those schools of thought. I am not out to bash what's new, I'm oriented towards saving what's true. It must be said that my livelihood exists in an industry that didn't when I was born - there are few things more progressive than the IT business which is constantly suffused with change. But in this as in any human endeavor there are principles which are as immutable as the function of human organs - which is to say, they simply don't evolve on any timescale our politics and thinking might like them to. Just as 010 + 010 = 100 (in binary), the stomach will digest what it can. As much as we'd all like to end world hunger and thirst, we cannot eat wood and we cannot drink seawater. And so there is a finite limit to useful human behavior much experimentation with which is a waste of time, sometimes deceptive and often a distraction from what is true and ought to be.

I am fatigued of the noisome politics associated with the tinkering of gender and identity and family which have suffused American life, not only because it is vapid and vulgar but because so much of it is just wrong. Nuff said. Kali and I and you will engage on a mission to give some insight into how much fiddling we ought to afford and what might be the consequences of such messing about.

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I'll start with my essential premise which is that for the majority of human history such as I can gauge it, we have been ruled by kings and tribal chiefs and that our ideas about honor and dignity flow from such feudal arrangements. I believe that there is something fundamental and hardwired in human circuitry to give us such ideas as 'honor thy father and mother'. I want, of necessity, to keep in mind the permanence of human conflict - of war - and of the ways and means humans employ to survive instinctively and to maintain their populations in hard times. I think we have the frivolous desire to define ourselves into arbitrary social arrangements that cannot and will not survive human conflict and that these desires fuel the raisons d'etre of today's social fiddlers. Instead, we should reform our society in such ways as it remains fundamentally robust in the ways and means that have gotten us from pre-history to now and that the overwhelming majority of us remain politically and socially invested in these tried and true conventions. I assert that without commitment to conformity all of our experimentation, all of our liberty, all of our tolerance comes to naught.

October 01, 2010

I've got a couple excellent video podcasts from iTunesU. My new pet is David Starkey who is an engaging and wry commenter on matters concerning English history.

It should be completely obvious to me that there would be such men as Starkey who provide more background than I might come to expect from only Hitchens, but I have been a bit lazy of late. Obsession with work these days, I'm afraid. And so I will continue at iTunesU and from the archives of the Hoover, and will seek parallel publications from Britain as well.

So what he describes quite brilliantly in his lecture on monarchy is that it is quite still with us, and is a singular part of human nature. Just as I have finished the book on Magellan and was quite initially stunned at the foolish way he met his demise on Mactan Island, I am coming to some conclusions about matters of prestige and dignity affordable to the Peasant. I have been initially intrigued by the idea that prestige and even dignity are things that issue forth from potentates & kings immediately accessible to Peasants, as contrasted to that which is recognizable from good deeds and right thinking. Honor is in whose hands? What is honorable to the Peasant but his fidelity to the king? Well, that question being unresolved, it is clear that Magellan was willing to do all kinds of idiotic and egotistical showing off for his king, and it got him and dozens of men under his command butchered. Ordinary people are extraordinarily motivated by non-democratic institutions, like churches, families, corporations and universities. Starkey makes an easily convincing case for studying monarchism in these modern institutions. I have already been thinking that way in the argot of feudalism, thus my own Peasant Theory.

What he then does is links England's own history of monarchy to an extraordinary moment which bears much repetition in our own American confusion on matters of marriage. He describes the efforts of a phalanx of clergy who sought to block reforms in English law making divorce more acceptable. The leader of that phalanx was one Cosmo Gordon Lang, who if whatever counts for truth be told, was homosexual. I bring this up because of the fashion we currently suffer in endless debate over the meaning of homosexuality to the institution of marriage. It is rather unthinkable, therefore, that we might hear a story of a powerful man who works at the highest levels to assist King George VI in defending Marriage. And the miracle of George VI is that he becomes king precisely because his older brother could not, because his older brother divorced.

It might go without saying in England that divorce among the monarchy is unthinkable, but we Americans probably know nobody but Henry VIII, and that vixen Dianna. But it is so deeply held that Kings and Queens do not divorce to the British people that the monarchy was transformed into a great symbol of prestige and dignity in modern times by the choice of George VI. Rather in the same way we think of Grace Kelly making the extraordinary accessible to the middle classes, Marriage became elevated in England when it became possible for commoners to become part of the Royal Family.

I do not do Starkey justice, and strongly recommend that you watch this video in its entirety.

Half, he says, of Western European countries still have monarchies. Norway, Sweden, Belgium, England, Spain.. Sure the countries are democratic, but the monarchs have their roles and as institutions their permanence says something transcendent that is fundamental to humanity. The nexus between Royalty and marital fidelity is etched in the ideas of honor, prestige and dignity. It's not something just made up by political activists who presumably are 'phobic', but deep in the history of the West.

August 04, 2010

I thought this matter was settled. And apparently it's going to have to go through the roof, as it just has. It would not surprise me if the Supreme Court of the US decided to invent a right to marriage. Doing so would convince me, not that we're going to hell in a handbasket, but that our government truly sucks, and that America has at long last become a semiotic swamp.

It may have always been, and perhaps my instinct and everyone else's to distrust the legal establishment is well-enough founded. But I would think that somewhere in that hierarchy was a bit more integrity and some firm belief that the People could decide. But the decision of the people has been voided.

Lest you be some anthropologist from the future in which Gay Marriage is obvious and a right, looking back to these 'backwards' days, let me reiterate my position which has been modified ever so slightly. The slight modification is directly due to my previous acknowledgment of the degree to which our democratic institutions are incompetent.

Marriage is a social convention of great age and acceptance. So are the traditions of homosexual bonds between men, and between women. None of them are equivalent. It is a lie to suggest otherwise. The recognition of common law marriage in our secular democracy is an acceptable baseline for me, and in that is my slight adjustment. I mean to suggest that a "civil union" is as much recognition that the Federal Government should give.

I wish to make a distinction between Holy Matrimony and what is commonly understood as Marriage between a man and a woman. My opposition to Gay Marriage is twofold. Firstly, because of the implications of a redefined, state-recognized Marriage on various religions. Which is to say in the this case, that rights of free exercise and freedom of assembly are abridged if a gay couple can sue a church forcing that church to recognize them as married - the state's definition trumping the religious definition. This is my primary objection. This distinction needn't be stressed if the state stops at "civil union".

The second objection is more subtle.

I object to the fact that the offer of civil union was rejected by political
activists for the cause of Gay Marriage. I interpret that rejection as an acknowledgment that their aims are social engineering. Which is to say, activists for Gay Marriage want the rest of the world to give gay couples the sort of respect and social acceptance that married couples enjoy. Aside from the fact that it is authoritarian, it attempts to get from the law what it cannot get from society - which is understanding and respect.

That judicial panels have been the undoing of several plebiscites in California only exacerbates the insult of this activism and it further hinders the cause of social understanding.

The longer this issue hangs around, especially in California, the less confidence I have in our democratic institutions to negotiate matters properly. That's bad news for all concerned. A state label of "Married" cheapens the brand, like a marriage license
issued in Las Vegas it means less and less.

--

I hold out one hope. That should this degradation continue that the definition of Marriage will become so flexible and the law so contradictory that divorced women will not be able to sue for alimony. That kind of failure will be the inevitable necessity in the semiotic swamp.

November 25, 2009

I enjoyed reading the post but am confused by your response to Snacks
stating that you support mature, responsible gay relationships but
because the motivation for gay marriage is not purely protection of the
minority you are against gay marriage. My question to you is why should
the motivation be solely focused on protection of the minority from the
tyranny of the majority? Why can't the fight for gay marriage be a self
interested desire to benefit equally from legal protections and tax
breaks that accrue to "married" people. Legalizing marriage for same
sex couple does not require religious institutions to shift their
doctrine or play any role whatsoever in the process. The societal
change that will occur as a result of widespread access to same sex
marriage is the realization by prior antagonists that gay marriage has
no impact on their lives. This is the reality in MA and there is no
reason to assume otherwise for the rest of the nation. Proposition 8
and others like it demonstrate that basic human and civil rights should
never be put to a referendum.

Prop Eight passed, and as far as I can tell, nobody has been talking much about it recently. When it passed, the reaction by protesters was hostility directed against the LDS Church, which was portrayed as engineering a conspiracy.

The direct answer to the question is that protection of a minority does not require 'societal change that will occur as a result of widespread access to same sex marriage', but this is the honest statement of impetus for a redefinition of marriage. Of course those opposed to gay marriage recognize that there is an impact. The only way for there to be no impact is for there to be no change in the law. That, of course, does not preclude homosexuals to engage in 'defacto marriage', but it does restrain them from the privileges and immunities of Marriage proper. The 'defacto marriage' can and still should be recognized by law as a civil union.

My opposition is satisfied by the passage of Eight and what I take to be the reconsideration of advocates for the gay cause that the sky hasn't fallen, nor have any individuals lost standing in the courts to address human rights or civil rights violations. Of course gay marriage activism was social engineering masquerading as a defense of civil rights under the abused heading of 'equality'. The self-righteous demand for those privileges and immunities of Marriage has been met with a humiliating beatdown at the polls, but little more than that and an end-zone dance. Perhaps the shouting is over, and that's a good thing.

September 25, 2009

There's something very weird going on that I need some women's perspective in understanding. I just happened across a statistic that informs me that in 2005, about 35% of American women delivered via Cesarean Section. 30 years earlier the rate was about 5%.

WHY?

I have no clue as to why American women are increasingly having c-sections, but my instinct tells me that it's related to the sexual revolution, a set of social changes I find increasingly dubious. So I'm poking around and here is what I find.

Nearly half of obstetricians in Canada say a woman should have the
right to choose a caesarean section when there is no medical reason to
warrant one.

The finding comes from a nationwide survey of
maternity care providers that found many obstetricians appear to
support the wide use of technology, despite a push by their own
professional body to "normalize" childbirth and reduce Canada's rising
C-section rate.

Forty years ago in Canada, five per cent
of babies were delivered by caesarean. Today the rate is 28 per cent
nationally, and more than 30 per cent in B.C. and P.E.I. More than
78,000 C-sections were performed in Canada last year.

Prolapsed cord (where the cord comes down before the baby),
placenta abruptio (where the placenta separates before the birth),
placenta previa (where the placenta partially or completely covers the
cervix), fetal malpresentation (transverse lie, breech (breech can
sometimes be managed by External Version, exercises or a vaginal breech
birth), or asynclitic position), cephalopelvic disproportion (CPD,
meaning that the head is too large to fit through the pelvis. This can
also be over diagnosed, it can be caused by maternal positioning either
from restraint to bed, lack of mobility or anesthetics.), maternal
medical conditions (active herpes lesion, severe hypertension,
diabetes, etc. (please note that these conditions do not ALWAYS mean a
cesarean.)), fetal distress
(This is a hot topic with the recent studies indicating that continuous electronic fetal monitoring
increases the cesarean rate and does not show a relative increase in
better outcomes. Discuss with your care provider how they define fetal
distress and what steps are used to remedy the situation before a
cesarean.), maternal exhaustion,
and repeat cesarean, these are the main reasons for cesareans.

This article uses the US debate over elective Cesarean sectionto re-consider some of the more contentiousissues raised in feminist debates about childbirth. Three waves of feminist commentary and critique in the UnitedStates are analysed in light of the ongoingdebate over whether women should be able to choose Cesareanfor non-medical reasons. I argue that the alternativebirth movement's essentialist and occasionallymoralistic rhetoric is problematic, and the idea that some women's preference for high-tech obstetrics isthe result of a passive 'socialization' into'dominant values' is theoretically inadequate.On the other hand, the invocation of women'schoice and appreciation of high-tech childbirth serves as aweak foundation for a feminist perspective onchildbirth. By limiting their analysis to therhetorical and discursive nature and functions of 'the medical' and 'the natural', poststructuralist critics of the alternative birth movement obscure theconnection of these discourses to practicesthat have very different consequences for maternal and infanthealth and, most importantly, for the consumptionof health care resources.

The alternative birth movement is a consumer reaction to paternalistic
and mechanistic medical obstetrical practices which developed in the
United States early in this century. Alternative birth settings
developed as single labor-delivery-recovery rooms in the hospital or as
free-standing birth centers. Both alternatives offer family-centered,
home-like, low technological maternity care. In order to overcome
physician resistance to non-traditional maternity care, alternative
birth center policies eliminate all women who are expected to have a
complicated pregnancy or delivery. Physician resistance to alternative
birthing is publicly based on the issue of maternal and infant safety.
Additional issues, however, are that physicians fear economic
competition and resist loss of control over obstetric practice. This
paper (1) traces the historical antecedents and social factors leading
to the alternative birth movement, (2) describes the types of
alternative birthing methods, and (3) describes ways in which the
obstetrical community has maintained and rationalized dominance over
the birthing process.

Reasons for the Rising Cesarean Section Rate

The following interconnected factors appear to be pushing the cesarean rate upward.

Low priority of enhancing women's own abilities to give birthCare
that supports physiologic labor, such as providing continuous support
during labor through a doula or other companion and using
hands-to-belly movements to turn a breech (buttocks- or feet-first)
baby to a head-first position, reduces the likelihood of a cesarean
section. The decision to switch to cesarean is often made when
caregivers could use watchful waiting, positioning and movement,
comfort measures, oral nourishment and other approaches to facilitating
labor progress. The cesarean section rate could be greatly lowered
through such care.

Side effects of common labor interventionsCurrent
research suggests that some labor interventions make a c-section more
likely. For example, labor induction among first-time mothers when the
cervix is not soft and ready to open appears to increase the likelihood
of cesarean birth. Continuous electronic fetal monitoring has been
associated with greater likelihood of a cesarean. Having an epidural
early in labor or without a high-dose boost of synthetic oxytocin
("Pitocin") seems to increase the likelihood of a c-section.

Refusal to offer the informed choice of vaginal birthMany
health professionals and/or hospitals are unwilling to offer the
informed choice of vaginal birth to women in certain circumstances. The Listening to Mothers
survey found that many women with a previous cesarean would have liked
the option of a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) but did not have it
because health professionals and/or hospitals were unwilling (Declercq
et al. 2006a). Nine out of ten women with a previous cesarean section
are having repeat cesareans in the current environment. Similarly, few
women with a fetus in a breech position have the option to plan a
vaginal birth.

Casual attitudes about surgery and cesarean sections in particularOur
society is more tolerant than ever of surgical procedures, even when
not medically needed. This is reflected in the comfort level that many
health professionals, insurance plans, hospital administrators and
women themselves have with cesarean trends.

Limited awareness of harms that are more likely with cesarean sectionCesarean
section is a major surgical procedure that increases the likelihood of
many types of harm for mothers and babies in comparison with vaginal
birth. Short-term harms for mothers include increased risk of
infection, surgical injury, blood clots, emergency hysterectomy,
intense and longer-lasting pain, going back into the hospital and poor
overall functioning. Babies born by cesarean section are more likely to
have surgical cuts, breathing problems, difficulty getting
breastfeeding going, and asthma in childhood and beyond. Perhaps due to
the common surgical side effect of "adhesion" formation, cesarean
mothers are more likely to have ongoing pelvic pain, to experience
bowel blockage, to be injured during future surgery, and to have future
infertility. Of special concern after cesarean are various serious
conditions for mothers and babies that are more likely in future
pregnancies, including ectopic pregnancy, placenta previa, placenta
accreta, placental abruption, and uterine rupture (Childbirth
Connection 2006).

Providers' fears of malpractice claims and lawsuitsGiven
the way that our legal, liability insurance, and health insurance
systems work, caregivers may feel that performing a cesarean reduces
their risk of being sued or losing a lawsuit, even when vaginal birth
is optimal care.

Incentives to practice in a manner that is efficient for providersMany
health professionals are feeling squeezed by tightened payments for
services and increasing practice expenses. The flat "global fee" method
of paying for childbirth does not provide any extra pay for providers
who patiently support a longer vaginal birth. Some payment schedules
pay more for cesarean than vaginal birth. A planned cesarean section is
an especially efficient way for professionals to organize hospital
work, office work and personal life. Average hospital charges are much
greater for cesarean than vaginal birth, and may offer hospitals
greater scope for profit.

All of these factors contribute to a
current national cesarean section rate of over 30%, despite evidence
that a rate of 5% to 10% would be optimal.

Astounding!

Are American women that stupid? Given this information, the decline of marriage and the rise of abortions since the American sexual revolution, I would say that on the whole our nation has radically degenerated on the very basics of human survival. Good Lord!

But let us never forget in these days of 'health care debate' the final paragraph. The incentives that encourage this surgical procedure increase its market share. Here is something I think all conservatives should make an absolute stand on. Defund elective Cesareans.

August 18, 2009

I just found myself saying the following with regards to gun control and abortion.

"The only way we are going to be more civil with each other is when we stop using the coercion of the law and the government on one another. When you have no option to call the cops on the man next door, it follows that you have to engage him yourself"

I am thinking about the limits of justice to be systematized and the consequences of libertarianism. Practically speaking, what do cops get called most about? Domestic violence.

I'm no sociologist but both my parents were. And it stands to reason that in a nation that has done away with notions like the permanence of marriage and the complicated sanctity of sex, that divorce rates are sky high and that divorcing couples are expecting something from each other that they are fundamentally wrong to expect. It seems rather obvious at this late date in my marriage that I value the marriage above myself - that I am submitted to it. But if the marriage is something I have, as opposed to something that has me, then I can discard it at my pleasure. Of course that means discarding the other person and the reasons why I bothered to cherish them in the first place. It seems to my amateur sociologist's mind that domestic violence is precisely the symptom of this mistake about what living together means.

The question becomes, is that any of our business? Which is to say can we enforce the principle of a proper relationship on people who have, at some point, decided what they wanted to be to each other? If you decided to get married according to tradition in the presence of God and society, then there is a commitment not only to each other but to God and society. If you decide to 'hook up' or follow one of those so-called love songs that put 'you and me against the world', then there is not that commitment. So if Rent-a-Cow Bob decides to bitchslap You Aint My Daddy Sally, aint nobody's business if he does, right?

Well, we can make it our business, because we are The People. And We The People can fund the Bureau of Domestic Affairs and have our certified counselors and sworn officers perform Intervention Services until the taxes run out. And yeah, that's kinda exactly where we are. And guess what, it's a growth business, especially if the Gay Marriage advocates have their way. Well, marginal growth anyway.

But the fact of the matter is that Domestic Violence is its own category and it brings with it incremental services above and beyond what is required for simple assault and battery. Woman beatings and child abuse and all that stuff takes up more of our effort, time and money, not only because they are significantly more offensive than bar brawls but because we have committed as a society to certify all sorts of living arrangements as legitimate and deserving of society's blessing.

There was a time when I was alive when the idea of a woman living with a man without being married was considered not only untoward but stupid and dangerous. But something about 'womens lib' changed all that, and of course cads like Bob were all too happy to oblige. And some generations of girlfriends have suddenly been convinced that they could reshape a man after a few years of living together in a 'committed relationship' and that through this process of softening him up, he could be transformed into 'marriage material'. You will find such women often singing sad Angela Bofill songs. Or at least transfixed by Sex and The City.

At some point we as a society will need to not care, which is to say that we may come to understand that such relationships need to be outside our circle of care. It's a simple truth that children who live under the odd parental regime recognize the failure for what it is. They haven't been conditioned to expect that sexual liberation justifies dysfunctional and impermanent relationships. That's because they're children and they don't understand the hungers of sex. But we sure have developed ways to train them haven't we? Instead of normalizing a permanent and sanctified marriage, we have normalized the oddment and tolerated the dysfunctional and made our expectations of romance and sex to be the so-called balance.

So we care. Society cares too much about too many sorts of romantic relationships and we believe that we can manage it all. How's that working out for us, eh? But maybe, just maybe, it's really none of our business.

Cobb's Rule: There is Marriage and there is Everything Else. Everything Else doesn't count.

June 28, 2009

I haven't had much time in the past week to think about the culture
wars, but I did listen to NPR excerpts on the Michael Medved show on
the way driving to Monterey from San Jose. One of these had something
to do with a visibly Christian TV family of some degree of physical
attractiveness and intellectual vapidity. I forget their names, but
there is some hay being made over their imminent separation. The
reasons they give are inevitably selfish and shallow, especially
considering that they have eight children under the age of 10. If I
remember correctly, there are twins and sextuplets, all products of
fertility drugs - just perfect for circus entertainment. I hear that
something is being made of the fact that some social conservatives have
adopted these freaks as pets and that their itch-scratching proves us
all to be idiots. Yeah. The second was some highly intelligent woman
that Medved could not believe was going to get artificially
inseminated. So there you see the theme, sexual experimentation at theexpense of the traditional humdrum of marriage.

I am no fan of soap operas. Can't stand 'em. Never liked anything
about them and think poorly of people who watch them. Except for my
wife. Mostly. So far, I've managed to ignore 99% of their content. But
I do recognize two of the actors. Anyway, one scene in the Young and
the Restless managed to interrupt my breakfast the other morning as a
dramatic revelation of passion played out on the screen, man to man. As
is customary, it all led up to a 'Oh no you didn't!' moment and then
cut to a commercial. So I asked the Spousal Unit what's up with that.
If Hollywood had decided once and for all that America needs a perfect
gay couple, just like it once needed a black TV news anchor, then which
soap opera would be used to introduce it? She figured it would be the
Young and the Restless, and as of 2009 it hasn't yet been done. So the
denouement to the scene will be that the propositioned man will reject
the proposing man despite having allowed him to thumb his cheeks and
lips for the dramatic moment. You see there is no gay relationship on
the soap operas. There's a reason for that.

In disposing of my need for political currency (and to be honest,
Dennis Miller is the primary reason) I am discovering the Hype Ratio of
conservative politics. The gravest mistake it makes is that it drapes
its legitimate moral concerns in the billowing cape of millenarian
paranoia, rather than a simple recognition of sin. The righteously
lived life is truly its own reward, but many on the Right suffer as if
the presence of decadence makes their lives impossible.So they are bound to a siege mentality and always holding out for a hero.

It's much easier to be appropriately flip. The eight kid divorcees are simply brazenly selfish fools
selling out their babies on the same train that brought them fame. The
intelligent woman is simply incapable of living with a real man, but
she has money and Hollywood friends instead. Homoeroticismsimply isn't mainstreamable. It's not the end of the world - the world is full of fools and sinners and so what? Nothing.

There may come a time when our entertainment geniuses decide that
brainy, heroic women do artificial insemination and deserve their own
sitcom. And they will cheer among their crowd reflecting upon the reign
of repression attending Murphy Brown. There might be a day when the
obviously gay actors can play obviously gay men instead of supposedly
persnickety men trying to meet the right girl. The in joke will be out
and everything will be obvious. We may find ourselves in the long tail
of entertainment that sends social conservatives into the streets
screaming with their hair on fire. At that moment I will simply raise
an eyebrow and direct your attention to one of seven deadly sins.That's all.

This world is bounded by extraordinarily great forces few of which
turn on the sorts of trivialities we have come to judge ourselves and
our neighbors. And just as there was a class of Americans who cared
only about Elvis Presley during the Korean War, there will always be a
class of Americans foolishly distracted from weighty matters. The Culture War rages on, but the stakes are not as high as I think the warriors believe. Beware the Hype Ratio.

May 26, 2009

So the first thing I noticed was who was twittering what, since Twitter is the fastest way to get breaking news of interest to bored Americans. Sticking my nose in the sewer, guess what I smelled?

THERE'S NO LIMIT ON HOW MANY COMPLAINTS YOU CAN FILE
it's quick, easy, fun, and above all legal
and I imagine, pretty effective if enuf people play too..
I just did a quick look-up, so please feel free to figure out who else is anti-american,
and post their info so that other people can join the fun also..
:)

That's the Prop8 Counterattack Virus being spread at your local Craigslist. I couldn't make that up.

The LAT reports at the end of their brief coverage highlighting a picture of outrage:

Even with the court upholding Proposition 8, a key portion of the
court's May 15, 2008, decision remains intact. Sexual orientation will
continue to receive the strongest constitutional protection possible
when California courts consider cases of alleged discrimination. The
California Supreme Court is the only state high court in the nation to
have elevated sexual orientation to the status of race and gender in
weighing discrimination claims.

Which is what we always knew. Nobody is being discriminated against and those that are should take their individual cases to court. That would be a parallel to the Civil Rights Movement, not declarations by fiat of what marriage is or is not. I said this long ago but I leave that as a Google exercise for another time. Today, I have a new motto with a hat tip to Bobby McFerrin.

Don't marry, be happy.

I'd still like to see the language of the majority opinion, but I'm too busy to really search. Why? I guess I'm just satisfied that's all.

April 17, 2009

I don't spend a lot of time talking about boys and girls here at Cobb, but I'm at about that point in my career as a father when I will have to as a matter of course. I haven't spoken much about abortion here either. It's obviously a fruitful topic. But I want to set a direction here and I'm taking a cue from Mirror of Justice. Them say:

First, Christians in general have been much more outspoken about SSM
than about non-SSM threats to the sanctity of marriage. Last summer I
spoke to a group of conservative evangelical Christians about SSM, and
this is the image I used to convey the GLBT community's distrust of
Christians on this issue:

Imagine that marriage is a house, and the Christian is sitting on
the front porch. The house is engulfed in flames. A gay person is
walking down the sidewalk, lighting a cigarette with a match. The
Christian stands up and yells, "Hey, don't throw your match near my
house -- that's a fire hazard!" Viewing the scene, the gay person
can't help but conclude: "This isn't about marriage. This is about me."

Second, over the past fifty years, very few Christians
have taken leadership roles in condemning obvious injustices against
the GLBT community.

If I haven't said it before, I think there's something radically wrong with boyfriends or girlfriends that hang around in 'relationships' for years although I will admit that it's more radically wrong for young people. I think that the idea that marriage offers nothing more is the primary cause for the preponderance of these strange affairs, and yes I want to get into that from my own arrogant perspective. Although I don't listen to morning radio I've heard enough of the advice shows to know that there's a big market out there for 'relationships'. Me, I like Lykis and Dr. Laura. They are on different sides of the same coin. Lykis slams young people who slide down the slippery slope of live-in relationships and Laura slams wedded people who can't keep their heads on straight about the rules and the consequence of breaking them. Both are in their own way very pro-marriage. They establish a high standard by debunking every half-assed and failing relationship that people rationalize their ways into.

In my defense of marriage and these standards I do not do so to revile those who don't. I will talk smack about you just as I would people who have no sense of style. I will cop a superior attitude when it suits me. I may be above making anything out of it, but I am not above thinking it and I do believe it's reasonable to make social hay out of such. Still there is the formal definition of hubris which is the arrogance to punish people who are already failing. This is what I don't do. I note the failure and I move on. You will notice at Cobb that I don't spend a lot of time talking about relationships and all that. But in this regard, that is to say the extent to which respect for marriage itself and the actions required in preparation for marrying well affect the behavior of single men and women, I do think there is much to be said.

I'm not sure how much causality there is in marrying well when it comes to the Old School project. It's certainly significant but I don't know how much. So I'm not sure whether it's a big deal to talk about it politically.

Yes. Tom Lykis and Dr. Laura are two sides of the same coin and they're both right. However since I am admittedly not a 'social conservative' I don't feel any obligation to be the kind of scold both of them are. But what troubles the proper Christian vis a vis MoJ's recognition of this default by Christians forces us into a defensive position. I'm not defensive, really. I have very strong ideas about what a proper marriage should be and it is informed by a great deal and initiated by the fact that my Catholic schooling forced me to reckon with it on a moral basis at an early age, which was admittedly strong negatives about the sins and little championing of the positive.

That leaves us with something of a dilemma. Right now I think I know how to split the difference but I am eager to see how the proper Catholic deals with it. You see I am convinced that there in an extrinsic sin in some homosexuality which is identical to hetero promiscuity. It is, quite simply, promiscuity. So splitting the difference, I think there may ultimately be some blessing of homosexual union, and I believe that it comes from somewhere in the social negotiation.

So do I think that there is some fraction of Christian love in gay sex? There has got to be, somewhere. And although I'm tempted to say "you're asking the wrong person", I could absolutely see that there is the homosexual man who does not believe in pre-marital sex, is saving himself for the right person and wants with all his heart to be blessed by the church. There is certainly some dispensation for that man within the body of Christ. But how the Church woks that out is all in the details. Again, we're faced with a lot of negative presumptions about homosexuality which are difficult to disentangle from the reality of any individual, and the Church shouldn't be presumptive but clear and firm.

To wrap this up and be clear, I've always said that the best case scenario is that the society should work out 'the rules' for homosexual relationships in such a way that the mainstream has a moral intelligence about them. I feel that the Church has some forward role in this process and can do things that the State & Hollywood cannot and should not.

March 05, 2009

At long last, I think I have come to the point at which I am satisfied with the Libertarian position on Marriage. Ken Starr is now as we speak, arguing in defense of Proposition 8. He says:

"I've seen very thoughtful Christians say, 'Get the state out of this.
... If you want to be married by your priest, rabbi, minister, pastor,
great -- call it whatever you want. [But when you're] welcome to city
hall, it's a civil union.' That may be the eventual way that we need to
go, because you see the culture war that is so unfortunate."

November 20, 2008

I've gotten up to the chapter in Liberal Fascism that discusses the links between Alinsky, Hillary Clinton and Michael Lerner. In my half-assed and lazy way I'm not particularly interested in making an extended rant against my presumed enemies in the public on the other side of Prop Eight. Nevertheless I will pay attention to who files amicus briefs, pays for legal defense funds and otherwise stands up on their hind legs. But what is more important to me, as you might have guessed, is to figure out the intellectual provenance of all this activism in first place.

It turns out that 'smash monogamy' was one of the slogans of none other than the Weather Underground. Yep. Dorn and Ayers and all that rotten crew. If you follow Google it lands you into some very interesting sets of commentary. I particularly like this one...

According to the 1989 bookDestructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60sby Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Weatherman trainees underwent grueling rituals of self-abasement and abuse in which their dignity, individuality and even sexual identity was brutally extinguished. On pages 84-87, Collier and Horowitz write;

"[The Weather Underground] initiated a 'smash monogamy' campaign to destroy bourgeois sexual hang-ups: Once monogamy was smashed, couples who in some cases had been together for years were harangued until they admitted their 'political errors' and split apart. "The next logical step was group sex. One of the last taboos was homosexuality, and the Weather command forced itself toward experimentation in this direction, instructing male and female cadres to 'make it' with members of the same sex."

It has always been impossible for me to read the manifestoes of the Sex Panic group, some of which have been posted here in the last few days, without being reminded of that eminently dumb political slogan of the 1960s, 'smash monogamy.' It invokes, for me, the seemingly unlimited capacity of segments of the American left to position itself in the most self-destructive, most marginal posture possible. In the name of "liberation" and "emancipation," an agenda is put forward that tells people -- straight, gay, lesbian and bisexual -- that the left will invade their most intimate relationships, with an agenda of breaking them up and destroying them. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Leaving aside the incredible capacity for deliberate self-marginalization here, the old 'we are revolutionary, because nobody can stomach our revolutionary ideas' pose, the political issue at stake is how one changes for the better societies under the sway of homogenizing sexual disciplines, in which a singular norm of heterosexual marriage is established and conformity to it is rigorously policed. One can seek to de-homogenize, to pluralize the norm, to make the norm more and more heterogeneous as its reach is expanded to cover more and more diverse types of human relationships and human beings, thus according a greater and greater number of people the rights and privileges which are currently reserved for those within the homogeneous norm; this is the path that the African-American freedom struggle and the feminist struggle has historically pursued, with some successes. Or one can disown the very idea of any norms, however heterogeneous, and insist upon the targeting of relations and individuals within the norm as the 'enemy'. This is the Sex Panic approach, for which the expansion and pluralizing of the norm is simply the reconstitution of 'queer' as 'normal.' For them, it is more important that the 'queer' remain the unassimilated 'queer' than that queers have the full rights and privileges of other citizens.

Uh huh. This rabbit hole gets fairly deep. This is your introduction. I'm not making any hard connections here, but the loose associations speak towards exactly what liberal fascism is all about, a fanatic desire to redefine human life and associations in order to serve Progress. What Progress must be made by redefining all of human sexuality? Why does this kind of thinking even enter into our politics?

In doing some research about the sexual revolution and a 1997 conference called Sex Panic, I found this interesting bit on the web. I excerpt:

YOU'RE going to want to slap me after a few paragraphs, so let me acknowledge even before I start that I grew up in the South, and that Southerners rarely abandon a cultural assumption that is almost hard-wired into us: That there must be limits to tolerance, and that there are times when we simply must tell people that they are wrong and that their ideas are dangerous.

Still, that does not mean that we Southerners are necessarily fascist. Some of us have read a little Locke. We strongly uphold individual freedom, the right to speak out and the right to pursue happiness. Nevertheless, I've been hearing a new idea lately that is both wrong and dangerous. That is the idea that higher quality sex is worth dying for, and that life after 40 is so worthless that one might as well have better sex and die young.

and...

James is 21. He's a senior at UC-Berkeley who has struggled greatly with his sexuality, with his self-esteem, with promiscuity, with insecurities about living up to the gay ideal of beauty, with fears about whether he can succeed in the world he'll face when he gets out of school.

I invited James to lunch to talk. I showed him Lisa's story, and then we set out across Buena Vista Park, walking west. The gay logo was all over the sky that day - rainbows - and I was enjoying life, despite my advanced age and the fact that I haven't had much sex lately. I asked James, Is sex worth dying for?

He didn't think for long. It depends, he said, on whether the person you're having sex with is a one-night stand or whether he'll stay with you. And it depends on when you die. If you don't die until you're in your 40s, then yes, he said, sex is worth dying for.

I was stunned and kept silent. I waited for a few neurons to fire in his head so he'd realize that he'd pretty much said that my life doesn't have much value because of my age.

November 16, 2008

I will attempt to make the following argument and represent myself as a Catholic. I stand in a 2000 year tradition of marriage, which the state has determined to hijack through the following language: 'The State of California recognizes a marriage as between any two people of any gender'. The Catholic Church's position is that 'A marriage is between one man and one woman'.

A homosexual couple in the State of California desires to be married and Catholic. They are already registered domestic partners in civil union, and they have one singular gripe, which is that they wish the state to compel the Catholic Church to recognize them as married. The Church refuses and threatens to excommunicate them should they press their case. In every other way, they are members in good standing with the Church. They press their case. They are expelled from the Church.

What legal recourse should this couple have given the state's stated position? Why?

I am attempting to make this really about that one singular issue - the Church says they can be a civil union and remain Catholic. But they will not marry them, nor will they recognize them as married in the Church should they be married anywhere else. What should the state be able to do and on what grounds?

I haven't wearied of the rhetorical battle that has engaged me over the past several days. I feel that I have come close to expressing the full sentiment and logic of my position, but I find that each exchange brings out more nuance and that in each challenge to my position or assumptions about my position yields even further insight. And so I offer, in the spirit of understanding, a excerpt from a brief private correspondence begun earlier this year.

In the context of America, I have come to the conclusion that there is
some good and equilibrium to be found in keeping such struggles at a
low roar - to keep them from becoming lethal. To the extent that we
must suffer a lack of perfect understanding and domestic tranquility,
it seems we are bound to thicken our skins and take hits for our
tribes. It can be a rough trade even in a robust society such as ours.
But we also have the fortunate option of relative solitude. We can
carve some space in this great and free country where we might have
peace from the great social machinations of the day and satisfy
ourselves with our own ability to find comfort and strength in our
families, neighbors and communities of faith.

Yet some communities of faith gain strength from pure hatred and
bigotry. The franchise of those who are incapable of empathy of any
sort cannot be revoked. It seems to me that we ought to find a way to
reverse their strengths in the larger society by setting a better
example and as you say, constantly pressing our cases against
intolerance and injustice. The line between intolerance and injustice
is one I am trying to brighten because the law is the most powerful and
compelling tool we possess. The better part of my dog in the fight over
gay marriage is precisely over where that line ought to be drawn. You
see I think we should fight immorality such as bigotry and intolerance
in our private lives with all the social power and conviction we
possess. I think we should fight injustice with the full strengths of
legal and government powers at the disposal of the state. These fights
exist along a continuum of severity - not all immorality leads to
injustice but all injustice is certainly immoral. As I see the law, it
does not respect the differences we do in our communities of faith. And
so we must be extremely careful not to give it license to suppress them
based upon various definitions of immorality, especially those that
don't constitute injustice.

As you may have concluded, I do not consider the discriminations of
marriage of the traditional sort to comprise immorality or injustice.
But it certainly is more than an inconvenience for many homosexuals to
stand unrecognized in their exclusive and devoted loving relationships,
and so I support civil unions to grant and defend all rights,
privileges and immunities of marriage on an equivalent basis for
same-sex couples. I am convinced that there is a component of the
advocates in support of gay marriage that are less interested in those
actual injustices inflicted upon same-sex couples to to be legally
proscribed than they are in attempting to use the law to destroy
intolerance. This not only goes against my political principles, but I
think any reasonable person can see that it is impractical if not
impossible. Beaten over the head with the law, certain extremist
opponents will only retire to their own families, neighbors and
communities of faith where their intolerance and even their immoral
hatreds will find comfort and strength. How many of these people and
institutions should be destroyed for the sake of that particular
activist dream of destroying intolerance?

At any rate I have rambled on without a satisfactory close. I suppose
this indicates that I don't find the matter resolved to either of our
satisfactions. And yet I trust that we, as defenders of morality,
justice and domestic tranquility will maintain what we must to see our
ways through this. I sincerely hope that we find a way of securing
blessings and standing for our same-sex fellows without doing injury to
all communities of faith through the sorts of laws that seek to impose
a specific consciousness upon the public. It remains our duty as
members of society to see that all due respect is afforded such
upstanding couples who would declare their undying love and commitment, one to the other, before God and man. Perhaps
conversations such as ours may be a small beginning.

I hope I don't offend my correspondent by publishing this piece of our private conversation here, but I think it illustrative of the sort of thinking that can go on when the right tone of mutual respect is struck, something I often struggle with as a blogger and on-air personality. There is so much we in the demanding public want delivered to us conveniently. I am coming to recognize how little our abbreviated exchanges communicate.

November 14, 2008

I think it is very important to observe the sort of intolerance of activists for the gay cause in its hipocrisy which has been reduced to name calling. Like many personal convictions, there is some smug satisfaction to be had in saying that you are a friend to the oppressed, and a lot of reaction to the passage of Proposition Eight in California reeks of this hubris. But the paradox remains that the stories of gay liberation by gays themselves are deeply emotional and personal and difficult. Part and parcel of buying into the narrative is accepting what a triumph it is for gays to figure out how to get on speaking terms with their own parents and friends. Coming out of the closet is enormously difficult and for years and years we in the het community have been regaled with the drama and weight of this transformation. So it is a huge insult to see how suddenly all straights are supposed to turn on a dime and change our hearts and minds about homosexuality, rewrite constitutions and bless everything gay and lesbian as if it were simple and easy.

There is a reason that blacks don't support gay marriage. You might think that it's because of homophobia but you'd only be half right, if that. What a lot of conservatives don't know about progressive blacks (or ex-progressives like myself) is that we appreciate black lesbians and gays because they are transgressive in the extreme. Or at least we like to think so.

Any black man in my generation who didn't love Bruce Lee or Malcolm X was a faggot. Wearing short pants for any reason except playing basketball or swimming (real black men wore cutoffs, not trunks) was for fags. Black macho was the rule until approximately the era of Michael Franks and Al Jarreau. Then we realized that women dug sensitive dudes and adjusted appropriately. And while all of us brothers wondered out loud what was up with Al and those pink sweaters, we were also coming into contact with some genuine homosexuals.

I understand that it is considered rude and a bunch of other things to talk about 'fags', but I'm just keeping it real because that's what our attitude was. And if you were a good looking black man, chances are you would encounter a forward brother telling you in no uncertain terms that he was a black homosexual who could turn your head around. The gauntlet was thrown, were you man enough to love a black man?

My experience with the brazen courage of such men was tinged with a certain admiration. I would say on any number of occasions that if I was a homo, then I would most definitely be the sort out there in everybody's face. But it wasn't until the early 90s that I came to a political appreciation for how deep that sentiment could be held in the minds of black progressives. It was then that I was introduced to the films and life of Marlon Riggs and to the poetry and life of Audre Lorde. Black fags had gone beyond gay towards queer, and the black queers of all different varieties tended to take black power to new heights. Lorde's book 'Sister Outsider' rather encapsulated it all - If you think being black is hard, try being black and lesbian and crippled. Lorde was superbad.

[M]any white feminists were angered by Lorde's brand of feminism. In her
essay "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" Lorde attacked the underlying racism of feminism, describing it as
unrecognized dependence on the patriarchy. She argued that, by denying
difference in the category of women, feminists merely passed on old
systems of oppression and that, in so doing, they were preventing any
real, lasting change. Her argument aligned white feminists with white
male slave-masters, describing both as "agents of oppression"

Marlon Riggs had a similar message. If you think being a black man is hard, try being a black man who is already a primitive sex symbol where your sexuality is the reverse of what's expected and not only are you oppressed by white men, sometimes you really physically want to love them but not as a sex symbol. All of that was a lot to take, but what I understood was how the personal struggles of black queers fueled passionate rebellion in the spirit of black power. This very interesting and exciting transgressive
passionate dynamic energizes
Progressives and the politics of difference, and it augers potential for revolutionary change. The double and treble and quadruple
minority status of black queers is political dynamite - a genuine extension of black cultural nationalism. If freedom could be created by politicizing black pride with music, dress, dance and speech in the 60, imagine how much more freedom could be created by legitimizing the queer life. So long as black gays and lesbians can be angry, radical political revolutionaries, they can be used in the mainstream of black protest politics. You'll still hear the 'masters tools' argument in angry black political circles. This is how black gays got respect.

But most
homosexuals and certainly most black homosexuals are not trying to be political. They are trying to get
through life with a minimum of hassle, like all of us. Gay sex isn't
easy. Straight sex isn't easy. Sex is complicated and difficult and we
all have hangups about it and we wrestle with those hangups all our
lives. There's no single political direction sexual liberation points
people and the attempt to politicize sex, especially given this dynamic
is the province of the few, not the many.

So there is a gap between the reality of gay black life, and the political reality black progressives wished to portray through the politics of difference. I find a very great paradox between the personal lives of gay black men I knew in the every day business of living a closeted life and the hyper difference of the angry black queer man who would overtly politicize his sexuality. When stories about ordinary black men 'on the DL' came out, it was a disturbing story for many blackfolks because these young men were not so interested in standing out and using themselves as black power symbols. They just wanted to get their desires fulfilled without drawing too much undue attention. Instead of being a treble minority, some young black men adopted gangsta misogyny to cover for their indifference to sex with women. It made things easy. Whether it was a gangsta style or not, the bottom line was to be incognito, not vocal, not politicized.

I am of the opinion that it is the minority of black political activists who seek to exploit the politics of difference. It's one thing to be demanding of black liberation (and not all blackfolks are keen on such revolutionary matters such as Afrocentrism or issues like reparations), but it's another to place transgressive black queer energy into your politics, to be out there blazing with tongues untied. The majority would rather leave the matter with King like rhetoric about the content of one's character, than use the rhetoric of Audre Lorde. While it's true that many black people believe that white antagonism to black culture is and should be a matter of political concern, not many wish to create space for black freedom by putting our queers in white faces. Some do, most have got issues.

And so Gay Marriage doesn't appeal to blacks because black politics and culture has not evolved a place for it. Black queers have a place in revolutionary black politics, but ordinary gays do not. In a culture where the role of men and family is always found in shifting sands, the black gay man who wants something as simple, respectable and middle class as marriage with another man is on very shaky ground. Black women have a very difficult time accepting that the rare 'good black man' might be gay, or interested in white women, and this is a powerful force in black opinion. The exception is for the black queer who is used by black progressives in a radical chic fashion exactly in the same way that white liberals used angry ghetto blacks to further their agenda. Black gays themselves may be unwitting victims of a new blaxploitation in such a way that their actual modest goals of acceptance in marriage is all but ignored.

Is that homophobia? Undoubtedly that is part of the equation, but it is also the success of the political exploitation of a black queer revolution that makes gay marriage an oxymoron to black people.

November 13, 2008

I heard on Dennis Miller last evening that a group of homosexual activists spit in the face of an 80 year old grandmother for defying their crusade. I think she was a Mormon, but it hardly matters. This radicalism has gone too far.

It is surprising how useful reading Jonah Goldberg's 'Liberal Fascism' has been in understanding matters of conflict between Left and Right. Following his example I am going to reduce political complexity that I have previously used from three schools to two. I had previously talked about Liberals, Progressives and Conservatives. I will now talk only about Progressives and Conservatives. Primarily this is about who has the upper hand in the intellectual direction of the parties. Progressives, encompassing Pragmatists, the followers of William James are the leaders of the Left. Barack Obama is squarely there. Conservatives took over the Right with Ronald Reagan in 1980 who branched off from Goldwater. The Rockefeller Republicans are essentially dead.

I will also however talk more about Classic Liberalism as the home of Conservatism whose values we may all be trying to get back to - depending.

At any rate, I have suffered through a great deal of bickering about who's a bigot in all of this noise about Proposition Eight, which is rather odd considering that California merely joins the other 41 states in outrightly banning gay marriage. What nobody has done in any of these flamewars is detail any of the 'rights' that are supposedly being denied gay couples. It has, in the most logical case, boiled down to 'the right to call themselves married', with no reference to what exactly being married gives straights other than social recognition. I think that the social recognition is an important part of the cast that advocates for gay marriage should emphasize, but that they should not pursue this matter in the scortched earth manner they have done, and thus they are destroying their own case by claiming all of their opponents are bigots. Here is the applicable case law that nobody has been referring to. Actually very easy to find if anyone cared.

An
honest evaluation of all of the differences will recognize that 99% of
these differences are benefits not rights, and a case that any of these
benefits are Constitutional rights is easily debatable. This is the
distinction I make for inheritance of property - however I don't see
how any gay partner's unwillingness or inability to execute a proper
will is a responsibility of the state. Probate can be ugly for anyone.

A second look at the substantial list of benefits would show that almost none of them existed before the New Deal.

It
is to be expected that Progressives will expand upon Rousseau's concept
of the General Will as the proper driver of state activity. Similarly
we can expect Progressives to demonize their opposition, especially
conservatives who wish to limit the scope and influence of state
granted status and definitions of social institutions.

This is
a sterling example of my tried and true definition of the difference
between left and right. The left wants to use the power of the state to
make up for the dysfunctions of their families. The right wants to use
the strength of their families to protect against the excess and abuses
of the state. In that regard it makes perfect sense that advocates for
gay marriage cannot and do not expect the benefits of gay and lesbian
relationships to meaningful or fulfilling without the assistance and
support of the all encompassing nanny state.

Everything in the
State. Nothing outside of the State. Nothing against the State.
Establish the General Will through the apparatus of the State.

November 12, 2008

I've been watching and listening and there is something that is becoming true and it is the truth about black Americans. It is a sort of truth that is coming from multiple directions, but it is not converging around one concept of set of facts. It's just noticeably more honest and forthright than we have seen.

This morning, a quote over at Booker Rising said something about the Obama family that was said about the Cosby Show over two decades ago:

I am loving the positive imagery and symbolism of this new President and First Lady. It is going to do wonders for 'black love' in America, and I dare say for an entire generation of young people who will grow up watching this young first couple balance marriage and family with grace....What I think will be most important is that young black men will see a powerful black man who is deeply involved with his children, and who openly adores and admires his wife. His beautiful, strong, intelligent black woman. I'd better go before I start crying again (been doing a lot of that lately). Let me be the first to say that I am so hopeful for the black community, and for a reshaping of our values and behavior. Maybe we will have a return to old-fashioned courting, letter writing, respect, admiration, and enduring friendship between men and women. God knows we need this so desperately in the black family right now.

In one way, this is an insult to black people, as if Obama were so rare and unique that he is almost unrecognizable and therefore a bracing reminder of what we're supposed to be. The soft bigotry of low expectations is embedded in every Obama Hallmark moment. In another way, I am reminded that such moments are easy to find. If somebody followed me and my family around every waking moment, or the families of any of my close black friends, they would see the very same thing - provided they edited the set down to the good bits.

Jimi Izrael is saying similar things with characteristic humor and edge. He notes some behaviors that are on the outs if we are to keep up with the Obamas. His is a top twenty list. I particularly like these few:

17. Hip to be square-being uninformed and uneducated won’t be so cool anymore.
18. College= No longer an option-Any black dude not talking about
going to college will become an instant pariah. GED=Status Ain’t ‘Hood.
19. Death of the Angry Black Man-Obama’s a cool customer, and he
changes the perspective about the black man’s palate of emotions .
Finally, people will allow black men a larger degree of feelings than
‘angry’ and ‘not-so angry.’

But we know all this. All of this sort of talk is not an epiphany so much as it is a breath of fresh transparency. An axiom of Cobb is that black culture is transparent. The black internal cultural wars will continue and for now it is clear that the upscale contingent has the upper hand - as it should be. Afronerd must be happy. I'm happy in the way I thought I would be before Obama turned out to me more against my political philosophy than I expected, precisely for this black cultural benefit. Here's what's going on.

What is striking about this era is that having everybody talking about a black man and a black family all of the time (that demonstrably 52% of Americans trust to lead the nation - assuredly positive) is like having the big buck come out of the woods. All of the timid does and baby deers follow, slowly but surely. And like a circle of confessors in therapy start to really show themselves once they are convinced that the leader is not going to take advantage, the truth slowly starts to emerge. Not something startling but the amount is greater and the details are more vivid. This is what's happening in America with regard to the truths about black culture and our changing attitudes towards it. Obama is the catalyst. So far, so good.

I like the confidence with which people are boldly speaking their minds about black culture and I will do what I can to promote such verbal conflict at Cobb. What I believe we will find is primarily that the Old School values embedded in the example of the Obama family will validate what black conservatives have been saying all along - furthermore that the enacted policies of the Obama adminstration, if it proves to be as moderate as it sometimes claims, will be used by wags like me to further a sort of social conservatism that black communities desperately need.
I take this opportunity to cite my previous works vis a vis Hymowitz and Moynihan and hope such matters bear fruit.

November 07, 2008

Ahem. Score another for Bowen. I bring you this prediction that I made in May of this year.

I predict that California will have a a constitutional amendment in
defense of marriage, and that activists for the cause of gay marriage
have made a fatal error. California has insured every right except the
express permission to redefine marriage, and now the State Supreme
Court has overstepped its bounds in defiance of the will of the people.
It's going to get loud and ugly and it is now most definitely a
constitutional crisis.

It's rather interesting to see the backtracking and hair splitting of those calling for a new legal challenge to this, the second and harsher rebuttal to the. Evidently there are two levels of constitutional amendment. Who knew? The claim is that the passage of Prop 8 represented basically a MAJOR change to the California Constitution and that it was worded as a MINOR change. And we are to know that a MAJOR change requires a different standard of passage than we just saw. Hoo brother.

So all the hectic business we just went through, according to activists for the cause of Gay Marriage wasn't a real constitutional change but a halfway real constitutional change. So we need an intervention to make a super duper really extra change to the constitution.

Somebody please do me the favor, lazybones that I am, to illustrate exactly what money all these same-sex couples aren't getting because obviously these people don't give a rats' about principle.

October 24, 2008

There are problems with all the excuse making for same-sex marriage. I see three.

The first has to do with the notion of love and family throughout history. If it is true that same-sex couples in all of their manifestations of love and family have always been true love, what did they have in that love that they would lack after Eight passed on November 4th? Nothing. There is nothing to recognize in homosexual love that will change or be any way better discernible after an election. 99% of the time.

The second has to do with the outside possibility that an officially recognized gay marriage would be something new that has never existed before, which is to say if the above comment has a leak, it is that after November 4th given the failure of this referendum, that gay couples will have something they never had before. But I suspect in the tone of the dissenting voices against Prop Eight, that they are not only against the proposition, but they are against the very idea that there should be a proposition. Which of course was the attitude of the judges who brought the necessity of the proposition by their initiative in declaring the prior declared will of the people unconstitutional.

Marriage is not only between a man and a woman, marriage is a public declaration of love and trust. Not only between two people but a contract with society. It is an invitation to judgment done with love and trust. When we publicly declare before God and man, our eternal devotion to another, we invite them into our business, to judge our behavior against a standard. Those who do not want to be so judged don't bother to be married - they elope, they shack up, they do whatever it is they do with no need or desire for others to pay them any mind. They depend solely upon the value of their love to sustain them - you and me against the world, baby. That's what's known (very well) as 'common law marriage' and it is what every serious domestic partnership has this very moment. It thus should be clearly understood that the true import of any resolution on marriage for gays is that all of us - the people of the State of California - being so invited to judge. And so it has come to this, where we discharge a duty as citizens variously capable and willing to begin a new regime of judgment or to leave well enough alone. And I think there is one thing everyone can agree on. Our judgments on the propriety of gay marriage will not change with the passage of law, this law is not for any of us who already know what we already know. It is for the instruction of children.

Implicit in this there may be some hope that the new, socially accepted Gay Marriage, could be to the next generation something other than the darkness of the shadow of whatever ghosts and fears of homosexuality lurk in whomever's minds. There might be some hope that officially married gays might be more open and comfortable, more supported in their family lives by a generation that accepts them more than we are presumed to in the status quo. I'm not quite sure what to make of such a hope, and that is because all of my close gay friends are closeted. And that only proves one thing - which is that everybody ain't cut out for Marriage, and some people are smart enough to recognize that fact.

Thirdly, this being California, there is no right anywhere, in any court, under any circumstance which is withheld from domestic partners. In fact, if this referendum fails, I will be able to be married, but I will not be able to be a domestic partner, but gay couples can be both. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false. Which is why the language of Eight is so simple. The proposition is merely a defense of something we know to be true, that marriage is between a man and a woman, against something we don't quite understand at all. Or perhaps we do, whether our opponents think we do or not.

If Eight is defeated, on the best day the best that could possibly be said was that some electoral majority of Californians saw fit to judge the competency, quality and content of gay relationships who declared themselves Married against our own sensibilities. Then again, we do that anyway don't we? That's not really what this is all about. Defeating this proposition is a statement in defense of a broken principle - which is that all things should be considered equal whether or not they are.

I think there are no good reasons to put this matter up for grabs except that an error in judicial temperament forced the hands of people like myself who would rather have had all hands off the Constitution of California. I am satisfied with the status quo, and as I have said any number of times, I fully support, 100% civil unions for same sex couples with equal rights in every aspect of family court. I simply desire with all due respect that Marriage not be redefined for any reason at all.

While any number of parallels and analogies will be made I think they are of little use. I expect people to address the question directly now that we are brought to this crisis point, this moment of truth. I think I am wise enough to see that what is in people's hearts and minds, and how people are apt to behave will not be dramatically altered by any public declarations except to the extent that they decide to take it personally. With any luck, now you know how I stand.

October 07, 2008

I keep forgetting to remember that one of the areas of what I consider moderate cultural and political agreement made itself patently obvious during the Vice Presidential Debate. No denial of rights. No redefinition of Marriage.

I certainly hope we can put this sucker to bed. BTW. I'm voting yes on Prop 8. And I'm leaving my old Church for putting a 35 foot banner on its property agitating against the proposition.

June 19, 2008

I'm going to answer this question seven ways using seven different men I know who are all good brothers and seven different songs you know.

Byron: One LoveThis tune is from Whodini. The same people who asked 'Friends, how many of us have them?' also procliamed, 'One love, one love, you're lucky just to have just one.' Byron was shy and goofy in high school. He graduated with good grades and a good sense of humor, and a virgin. He never had a girlfriend and never really tried to get one. Not even for show. He always took love seriously and said that one day he'd find the right girl, and that was all he had to say about it. He is not, was not and never will be on the market for romance. He found that one girl, married her 20 years ago and never looked back. In fact, he never looked up, down, sideways or any other way for any other girl. If you ask Bryon about love and the dating scene, he'll turn his head at you like a puppy. Women and men who shop for the perfect mate to him sounds like people who shop for the perfect refrigerator.

Daniel: ControlYou're Janet Jackson. All of 21 years old talking about how you are going to have everything in your life and you don't even know how to have a baby. Daniel dismisses you without hesitation. He is the man. He wears the pants. He will work from sunup to sundown seven days a week. He will sacrifice and work his fingers to the bone. Driving a bus. Walking the postal route. He will buy a decent house and a decent car and decent clothes. All you have to do is not ask for diamonds and pearls. Do the kitchen work, the kid work and the bed work, and he will marry you and fulfill your every need. The problem is that you confuse need with desire. Daniel doesn't make a lot of money and he never will. He just wants to be the man of his house. If you want a man who will fly you to Hawaii, then he wants a Victoria Secret model. They are both dealbreakers, so why can't you just be satisfied? Daniel is an honest, decent man who just wants to be a man. You want 'more'. That's why he's not having anything to do with your ass.

Zachary: Climbing Up The LadderZach is all about success. You don't understand why but everybody knew it when he was just a kid. All he dreamed about, all he talks about, all he ever wanted to be was that thing. Zach doesn't eat to enjoy the food, he eats to fuel his body so he can spend more time doing that thing that one day is going to get him to that place. In other words, you will never be first in his heart, his mind or his soul. Get used to it. Zach isn't cruel. It's not that he doesn't understand your needs. The problem is he will always think of you and the things that are important to you, second. He is singleminded about him and absent-minded about you, so half the time he will need to be reminded. It's not that you aren't perfect, he needs you to be able to understand him - to balance him and make him a whole person. But you will always be second fiddle to his dream. Get used to it. He's a perfectly good brother who doesn't read Essence magazine. You are too high maintenance. Zach is either a dreamer or a visionary. That depends on you.

Milton: Why You Treat Me So Bad?Milton has been burned. Milton is fundamentally a good brother, but he is not even ready to trust. It makes him look more pathetic than he actually is. On the one hand, he doesn't want or need to be patronized. On the other hand he is desperately trying to be the man he once was. See Milton only knows one way to love - completely with all of his heart and soul. So in one way, he's never going to get over that bitch. In another way, he needs you more than you know. All you have to do is be 100% sure that you love him. Milton, will eat you up. He will devote himself to you - he wants to say all the perfect things and utterly sweep you off your feet, but if you even sniff another man's second-hand cigarette smoke without choking he's going to give you the evil eye. He gives total devotion. He demands total devotion. With Milton, it's do or die. Why do you keep pointing out his obvious faults? Nobody's perfect.

Larry: Never Give Up on a Good ThingLarry is not a good brother, per se. He is a de facto good brother. Why? Because Larry has a great woman, a woman who truly loves him and works harder than the average bear. So Larry realizes he's probably not worth it so he's not going to risk anything so he does all the right things at the right time (at her prompting) and keeps his head above water. You are not going to get him because even though he wants you, you cannot outdo his woman. One day Larry's charm is going to wear off and then people will see right through him. He's an actual good brother because he's holding all the right cards, but that's luck, not principle.

Harry: I'm Too Sexy Harry is Larry's twin brother, except Harry actually does got it going on. The problem is that Harry is not even ready to settle down and quite frankly you can't compete with the hoes. Harry is eventually going to turn into the model citizen, but right now he's young and full of himself, plus he's already heard everything you could possibly say. He's bored, in fact, and there's a chance that he'll never settle down at all. You know it, he knows it, everybody knows it. It ain't fair, but there it is. Prostrate yourself, or be a bitch. You never know what's going to work and it'll drive you crazy just trying to figure it out. Give up. Or try blackmail.

Tony: It's Raining MenWell he's gay of course. One out of seven? Don't be surprised.--

Now to answer your question, I have been most of these men at one time or another. Well, all except Tony and Byron. Right now I'm probably Larry, meaning I'm very much into playing the stupid husband role, if you can remember that episode of the Cosby Show.

Secondly, this is a black public question. Or at least I should say that it was put to me in that way. The way I see that is through the lens of Cobb's Rule #2: There is Marriage and there is everything else: everything else doesn't count. There are no rules for relationships, it's all about people getting their jollies off whomever is willing to dole them out. Anything goes. And since anything goes, who cares what you think, and who cares what I think? The reason Marriage has lasted for centuries is because it is an arrangement that satisfies public and private needs, and there's an accumulated mass of wisdom associated with it. So everything I say about the good brother only makes sense in the context of Marriage, because quite frankly if you only want a relationship, the stakes aren't high enough to really matter in the end. People tend to bet their lives on Marriage, and that's the point. It's only when you bet your life that you get off your ass for something like exactly how you are going to treat another human being. Short of that, it's all transitory and fleeting and not worth much discussing.

To that black public question, you kinda have to ask why is the question out there? My kneejerk reaction is that the good black man becomes invisible to people who have to ask 'where they at?'. Daniel drove that bus right by you today. Did you notice him? Zachary wants to be a fashion designer. Did you think that was kinda gay? Milton is 36 years old, has never been married and has no kids. You keep thinking there's something wrong with him.

I know it sounds kinda strange, but men tend to confide in me about the subject of women. I sympathize, and I've heard these kinds of stories all the time. I think most men are like Milton and they end up being like a hard version of Daniel, and that is because most women don't know how to act like ladies. More specifically, most women don't act like they really want to be married, faithful and true. Those who do don't seem to recognize that they actually do have to compete with other women - it's all that shallow cow metaphor. The women that get it, then tend to think they're too smart to be a wife, like it's a punishment for being too fat or unsophisticated or something.

My personal opinion goes a little something like this. Women are crazy, and women know that women are crazy. Aside from predatory lesbians, there are no women who would go through what men do just to get in another woman's stanky drawers. And if women thought about just that thought long enough, I think they'd come to realize what I know to be true. Good wives are much, much happier in the long term. There is nothing quite so pathetic as an old single bitch. Well, OK an old single bitch with pictures of her toy dog on the piano instead of kids.

Men, of course, are filthy and ruthless. And men know that men are filthy and ruthless. Aside from bottom boy homos, there are no men who would subject themselves to the business end of a dirty, thoughtless man. And if men thought about however it is what women take pleasure in satisfying us, I'm sure they'd conclude as I do. A good husband is way more secure than a rogue. There's nothing quite so pitiful as the old man in the club. Well, an old poor man in the club who knows he's going to die alone.

Where are all the good brothers and good sisters? All around. Except they forgot what the endgame was. The question should have been, how can I get her to marry me? And until that question becomes more frequently asked 'good' is just a relative term. It ain't about the person. It's about betting your life.

May 16, 2008

I predict that California will have a a constitutional amendment in defense of marriage, and that activists for the cause of gay marriage have made a fatal error. California has insured every right except the express permission to redefine marriage, and now the State Supreme Court has overstepped its bounds in defiance of the will of the people. It's going to get loud and ugly and it is now most definitely a constitutional crisis.

I concur with the thrust of Baxter's dissent:

The question presented by this case is simple and stark. It comes down to this: Even though California’s progressive laws, recently adopted through the democratic process, have pioneered the rights of same-sex partners to enter legal unions with all the substantive benefits of opposite-sex legal unions, do those laws nonetheless violate the California Constitution because at present, in deference to long and universal tradition, by a convincing popular vote, and in accord with express national policy they reserve the label “marriage” for opposite-sex legal unions? I must conclude that the answer is no.

The People, directly or through their elected representatives, have every right to adopt laws abrogating the historic understanding that civil marriage is between a man and a woman. The rapid growth in California of statutory protections for the rights of gays and lesbians, as individuals, as parents, and as committed partners, suggests a quickening evolution of community attitudes on these issues. Recent years have seen the development of an intense debate about same-sex marriage. Advocates of this cause have had real success in the marketplace of ideas, gaining attention and considerable public support. Left to its own devices, the ordinary democratic process might well produce, ere long, a consensus among most Californians that the term “marriage” should, in civil parlance, include the legal unions of same-sex partners.

But a bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves. Undeterred by the strong weight of state and federal law and authority, the majority invents a new constitutional right, immune from the ordinary process of legislative consideration. The majority finds that our Constitution suddenly demands no less than a permanent redefinition of marriage, regardless of the popular will.

In doing so, the majority holds, in effect, that the Legislature has done indirectly what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly. Under article II, section 10, subdivision (c), that body cannot unilaterally repeal an initiative statute, such as Family Code section 308.5, unless the initiative measure itself so provides. Section 308.5 contains no such provision. Yet the majority suggests that, by enacting other statutes which do provide substantial rights to gays and lesbians — including domestic partnership rights which, under section 308.5, the Legislature could not call “marriage” — the Legislature has given “explicit official recognition” (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 68, 69) to a California right of equal treatment which, because it includes the right to marry, thereby invalidates section 308.5.5

I cannot join this exercise in legal jujitsu, by which the Legislature’s own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People’s will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference. Though the majority insists otherwise, its pronouncement seriously oversteps the judicial power. The majority purports to apply certain fundamental provisions of the state Constitution, but it runs afoul of another just as fundamental — article III, section 3, the separation of powers clause. This clause declares that “[t]he powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial,” and that “[p]ersons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others” except as the Constitution itself specifically provides.

April 08, 2008

There is very little I wouldn't do for my children. That's because they are mine. I live with them, I see them every day. My 13 year old daughter has several pictures of me up on her bedroom wall among the dozens. My boy dresses in matching clothes. My 11 year old daughter jumps into my arms every night. They obey me, they love me, they need me, they ask me questions, they critique my belly. We always hug, we like each other as people. They show me their homework, they tell me their jokes, we cook for each other (them more than me), we shop together. Right about now they are closer to me than ever.

If I didn't live with them, they would disappear.

The hardest thing about being a parent is your inability to treat children like adults. You need to tell them shit that they don't want to hear, that adults don't want to hear. The real deal. But you know they can't understand it. And so you repeat somewhat watered down platitudes until they can repeat it in their sleep. And they still don't get it. Kids are just accidents waiting to happen - innocents who can't do the math and have only a vague idea what danger is. So you shelter them and grow their virtue and give them every reason to believe that their virtues will be as respected in the real world as they are at home. And then you heal them when reality smashes their little virtuous worlds and show them that their tears are the pain of understanding when virtues get dissed. You need to be the grownup, the virtuous grownup when the shit goes down, and it tries your patience. But you do it so that in this dirty nasty world there can be at least these few you can trust with your life and you with theirs. My kids are the best people I know, that's because I raised them.

But if I didn't have that control? Phss. I wouldn't invest in that commodity.

I have no faith whatsoever in child support. There is nothing the state can do to come anywhere close to what I've been describing, and there is no way they can compel it. A man's relationship to his children is entirely his to decide. There is nothing anybody or anyone can do to change what that is. And if a man decides to write off his offspring, it's over. Done. Finito. Ask somebody with a distant father if child support made a difference. Oh I didn't have a father but at least I got the bastard's money. A fine substitute. I've never heard that.

When a man takes to a child, the greatest thing he gives him is his time and the benefit of his wisdom. A man allows a child to see how the man works, which is about the greatest privilege a man can give. He shares the secret recipe, he allows the child to see the man behind the curtain, all the while being a full man to the world. 'This is how I do it, and I know you can too' is the gift. 'This is what you've got, that I don't have'. That's the bonus. 'This is how you can do better than me', that's the whole enchilada. 'Here's some money, now leave me alone'. That's a bribe.

Anybody who pretends any different doesn't know jack.

I'm the primary custodial parent of Boy, and I don't get child support. I could demand it but I don't. I have been in all the chambers of child custody Hell except the lowest which is the one at which all hope is abandoned. But I know that's an exit to the other side at which all care is abandoned and a chunk of money is sent instead. I couldn't do it, and I know it's because I have it good, that I can say all this. I am in possession of my children and I am selfish and greedy about it. They belong to me, unquestionably. And so I belong to them equally so.

You can feel my passion in this, and I believe every man has it. And I believe that's why they say fuck the law when they do. Because when a man loses possession of a child, he asks why he even bothered to give life in the first place. I know the feeling of being a man when it seems that the only thing the world cares about your value is how much money you can send them - especially when you could be giving those great gifts. I feel for every man who has been there and must live with that, because I also know deeply that what every man wishes most to provide is security. That feeling when you wrap your arms around a woman or a child who places their head on your chest and thus are finally put at complete and total ease. The man who erases fear is the great man, and it's what we all wish to be. It's definitely a man thing.

April 07, 2008

Several years ago when I wore my race man's suit, I got into many debates, especially around the matter of the 2000 census with the interracialists. These were people of mixed racial ancestry who argued that they were the natural arbitrators of racial dialog, especially those who were 'black' and 'white', like Barry Obama claims to be. At the time, Lisa Bonet of the Cosby Show, as well as Lenny Kravitz the rock star, were the idols of the moment in keeping with the biracial spirit. Those biracials argued specifically that 'black' and 'white' were naturally or inevitably antagonistic and that the Census should recognize a new interracial category which was neither. I disagreed.

I am happy to report that the Census did the right thing by allowing individuals to claim as many races as they felt appropriate and that no interracial category was created. The interracialists were defeated and everybody went home. My greatest argument that I recall employing was that the interracialists were racist in that they wanted to create a new race and destroy two old races - they were eugenicists. Aside from that, they could not avoid the reality of the one drop rule which still applied and why most Americans with any discernable black ancestry tend to align with blackfolks - or at least those who are willing to acknowledge any.

But what about those who don't?

I know that the son of Anatole Broyard has a book out now, and I've been tempted to purchase it. Also there is no better critic of racial thinking than Adrian Piper, although she has managed in recent years to avoid becoming famous for it, much to her credit. Sure they are extraordinary folks, but here is my fundamental question.

Is anti-black racism in America so pervasive and oppressive that the best strategy against it is intermarriage?

I think that the answer is an unqualified no despite the fact that political efforts against anti-black racism are in a pitiable state of affairs. I find that the country has bumbled on quite well, based primarily on the unapologetic success of blackfolks themselves. There is racism and rumors of racism everywhere blackfolks are not in evidence, and Progressives cling to a theory that over a specific tipping point of black concentration, all of the 'bad' whites take flight. But I think that only racism that reacts to a black presence is the racist assumption that everyone else was an enemy. Nobody is allowed, it seems, not to take notice.

Nevertheless, it is an interesting question we may employ to split the difference between those who remain advocates of Black Power vs its more mainstream cousin of the cult of MLK. (For lack of a better worded dichotomy, true or false). As I mentioned this morning, no conversation which brings up the spectre of white supremacy can long evade the stubborn fact that there is no essential prohibition on interracial marriage in America. Since the Loving decision, which is not nearly as celebrated as the Brown decision, we've been free to break the most sacred taboos of the KKK.

It is clear to me that intermarriage is not a political solution to anything. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em is about as unprincipled an argument as possible. Any arbitrary boundary established for the free exercise of rights is oppressive. I'd no sooner marry white to vote than sell my soul to the devil. But..

But.

It seems to me that the proper perspective on interracial marriage should not be a point of racial pride or of rights. Nobody should recommend it. But exactly how does it matter socially? I'm really at a loss to explain how to think about it, because I've never considered it seriously for that reason - that of the liberty of one's progeny or, frankly any reason other than love. In other words I've never politicized interracial marriage - it simply always seemed to me a marginally interesting social choice. I am not suggesting that there is not controversy attending it historically -- I'm certainly aware of those social pressures on the African & French branch of my family union circa 60s Paris. And I've certainly noticed how much jungle fever gets noticed in various parts of the US. But I'm not sure there's much I can make of it today. I'm not even sure my fundamental question makes sense.

Why? Because

I don't buy into 'tragic mullato' stories. It doesn't mean anything.

I think that if one fundamentally believes that ethnicity should be subservient to modernity, you cannot respect the advantages or disadvantages that accrue for those who don't.

Who you marry is not the kind of personal choice that is politically significant.

There must be something else that I'm forgetting here. Let's go back to EC's/MLK's premises.

When the proportion of Blacks out of poverty will be the same as or
within 5% of the proportion of Whites out of poverty, then our nation
would have at least one good reason be very proud of herself with
respect to her efforts to achieve the ethnically and socioeconomically
egalitarian and meritocratic society King dreamed of. Until then, folks
like me, folks who believe that an ethnically and socioeconomically
impartial meritocracy is achievable presently and would make for a more
competitive and profitable use of our collective societal resources,
will continue to argue we've not come far enough and we're not moving
fast enough toward King's dream. Folks like me will continue argue that
too many middle-class and upper-class Whites still inherit too many
unearned privileges that they do not take full advantage of and too
many middle-class and lower-class Blacks still inherit too many social
hurdles that unfairly disadvantage them from birth.

There seems to be implicit in this argument the premise that blacks simply cannot marry whites and overcome the social barriers against them. In fact that the very unearned privileges inherited and passed on to little Jason and Megan would be stifled if they were half-black. So let us take the position that poor blacks cannot marry middle-class and upper-class whites. Is that because of race, or is that because of class?

Aside from this interracial question, I say that marriage and family are the ways that values are passed on, including and most importantly those values that teach one how to get on in society. When I suggested this vociferously for the elevation of blacks, a la Cosby, I have been scolded vociferously by Dr Spence that marriage is no leading indicator of economic progress, that he can prove them to be disjoint. So now I think we've stumbled onto the controversy.

I know this goes all over the place, but I hope to generate enough comments here to clean it up.

February 20, 2008

A. Charles is a thoughtful, diligent and provocative new commenter at Cobb who has done a great deal to help illustrate the difference between perceptions and principles of the American Left and Right. As part of his vision for the aim and role of government, which he now sees as going in the wrong direction, he quotes from Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965. There is one very salient point I would like to highlight as I do below.

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result. For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities--physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness. To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together--all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation.

There is no single easy answer to all of these problems. Jobs are part of the answer. They bring the income which permits a man to provide for his family. Decent homes in decent surroundings and a chance to learn--an equal chance to learn--are part of the answer. Welfare and social programs better designed to hold families together are part of the answer. Care for the sick is part of the answer. An understanding heart by all Americans is another big part of the answer. And to all of these fronts--and a dozen more--I will dedicate the expanding efforts of the Johnson administration.

Johnson made this speech in the same year that the Moynihan Report was published. I cannot imagine that he was unaware of Moynihan's position as a fellow Democrat. Moynihan was right and Johnson was right about the health of the family being key to success in America. Today, only the Right is right in the same way.

Who made black people stop getting married? Countercultural hippy liberals, gays and feminists. Who wants to make black people get married? Conservatives. Johnson said a government revolution was necessary to keep black families together. Conservatives say a social revolution is necessary to keep black families together.

So here's my crazy idea that I know conservatives would vote for in a heartbeat, a big tax break for marriage, as a matter of fact a big regressive tax break. Starting in 2010, you get a $500 tax break for every year you stay married. Liberals would hit the ceiling. It would be hugely and disproportionately beneficial for blacks, the group that has the most to gain from getting married because we are, I think, the most unmarried group next to homosexuals. But for the sake of gays, I think liberals would trash the idea.

All that aside, it's important to bring Hymowitz into the discussion, because the status of the black family is indeed a huge debate in which the Left and Right differ greatly.

Given the legacy of slavery that made marriage
impossible for blacks and Jim Crow laws that emasculated men, the
unmarriage revolution was bound to hit blacks especially hard. When
Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his controversial report "The Negro
Family", he was warning the country about a 25% illegitimacy rate among
blacks. In one chapter of my book, I tell the story of how black
leaders and black and white academics accused Moynihan of every sin in
the p.c. book. He was a racist who could not possibly understand "the
strengths of the black family." He was a sexist who failed to
appreciate the "strong black woman" and her "extended kinship
networks." It became impossible to have an honest conversation about
what was happening in the black community for the next twenty years
even as black welfare rolls, crime rates, and teen births were soaring.

Well, now the rupture between marriage and black childbearing is
just about complete. Seventy percent of black births are to single
mothers. Seventy percent. This has had a disastrous effect on men, who
have lost their major social roles as provider and father. It is also a
tragedy for the country because it makes the goal of full black
equality unachievable. Growing up in single parent homes, black kids
are destined to stay behind.

As a black conservative I ask the profound question why should blacks petition the government for programs to assist us in keeping black families together when we could do it for ourselves?

October 03, 2007

For the first time in a while, I tried something new, which was to watch a film I've only vaguely known to be good. It was free from the In Demand network in my corporate apartment, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Butterfield 8 is a morality tale. It is the story about the value of sex and marriage and self-worth of honesty, passion and abuse. It is the story about living with lies and what it does to the psyche, of the difference between friendship, lust and love. It's about class and money, control and freedom. It's an awful fabulous lot in an old movie, and it's the sort of movie they don't seem to make any longer. Perhaps today's directors and screenwriters know better than to tread in this territory.

The film is not very well edited and there's not much panache in the direction, but the acting is good - done for the sake of dialog and not empty emoting or beauty shots. it's the kind of film that begins like something cheesy, develops interestingly and ends perfectly. It is a modern tragedy of timeless values and therefore a classic. In some ways, I cannot imagine not having my soon to be teenaged children watch it. It's the right caution.

Some days ago, I happened to be listening to a late night radio talk show. it was the night that Halo 3 was to be sold at midnight. I missed the sale but I caught the radio talk show. The host was talking about how we make an enemy of our conscience when we indulge ourselves. We do wrong and we begin to despise the part of us that makes us feel bad about it and instead we welcome the kinds of people into our lives that want to share in our badness. We call the drug dealer our friend and we get angry at our true friends - we can't wait for good people to abandon us so that we can abandon ourselves into the arms of abuse.

But at some point in our lives, because most of us live long enough to regret, we realize how we have done ourselves wrong and have undone others in the course of it. We wonder if we can ever make good, if we ever deserve the sunshine on our faces, if we can ever pay the price for our betrayal. That is our moment of humanity, and there is always an opportunity for that moment to come. I say that is the very shape of our minds that does it, the nature of God in us. It's as true and simple as pain. Pain is our way of knowing that we are in trouble and it is only human to want the pain to go away.

At this moment I think of Alter Call. The proper minister always knows an Alter Call is always necessary. We always need to be reminded that we can make the pain go away, that we can return to conscience and that we might someday deserve the sunshine.

Butterfield 8 was an answering service in the film. A cutout conduit between two people unable to face the truth about themselves. So long as they used that underground channel of communication, they could enjoy their complicit deceit. It wasn't until they were ready to deal with their own true feelings, their own real consciences, their own reputations and psyches that they could ditch the conduit. And yet it stood, always something there to remind them, an indelible memory.

One day, we'll have real-time translation of all the voice messages and films and literature of today's recorded digital world. We could InDemand it and watch it at our leisure. But I think all that diversity of information won't matter - it will be the shape of the stories like this one that count. They will be few, but they will be evocative of the real truth about our souls. We can only hope to be watching the right channel.

March 27, 2007

I'm not sure how old she was when she did, but it was a very difficult decision for her. You see, Walker is a lesbian. Or at least one can say that she was in some sense of the word. Things are only so simple for people who cruise bars.

I finished my bar hopping for the evening and ambled into the bookstore on Rittenhouse Square looking for a hardcover copy of Harlot's Ghost, or a copy of The Satanic Verses, the next books on my reading list. I didn't find Mailer but I did stumble upon this leg of Walker's book tour. As I stood in the rear of the small gathering of quiet voices and anxious questions I found myself becoming more intrigued by the scene, first out of contrast to my previous encounters, second out of nostalgia for the days I regularly attended such soulful gatherings and thirdly out of genuine interest.

The subject was one which I regularly state as one of the axiomatic pillars of the difference between liberalism and conservatism. Conservatism protects the family from corruption of the state. Liberalism uses the state to protect from the corruption of the family. One can almost equally consider it an axiom that emotionally mature conservatives of this sort come from very well managed families. A well-managed family is not necessarily a good or great one, but it is one from whose strength one can reliably depend. Of course in every society families break, some tragically. In a highly individualistic society as ours, folks can depend on long, ugly streaks of isolation and longing when one is damaged in the home. I have a lot of respect for that healing process which is why I recognized the tough love behind Walker. Yeah I'm a bit more experienced as a dad, but I hear her mom vibes loud and clear. It is a secret language understood only by initiates.

Walker's audience was largely comprised of women who have not suffered through the cleansing agony of childbirth, and one could sense their conflict and ambivalence from a distance. Walker is a master of talking to them straight and guiding them gently. She's got a writer's honesty and self-knowledge. As I surfed her website and perused her bio, I found she's got much experience talking to young folks such as these.

There is genuine confusion and empathy. A thousand conversations that cannot occur in bars await the patient author on book tours. I could feel the tender tendrils extending as each young person walked up to the table after the talk. With one in particular whom I seem to recall in a denim skirt, the two women reminded me of my own two daughters whispering to each other. Oh how women talk. And where else could they go but to each other?

They can come to me, because in the end, big brother that I am, I spent most of the evening acquainting myself with a universalized version of this ritual. How can I protect this, I kept asking myself. How can I keep this part of society working? How can I recognize this from the fraud of eclexia? Walker invoked he who is Chesterton in my mind when she expressed that family works and has worked for hundreds and thousands of years, and 'we' shouldn't be so quick to dismiss its value. She recognizes what era she's living in, and said that those are dangerous words in some quarters. I imagine she would know that very well.

What I didn't really know then as I well as I know now is very much the same thing that these young people don't know. That is that the sexier you are and the more you recognize that free instinct, the more you will recognize your nature to be a parent. We just have lives that are so interesting and compelling outside of the basics of childrearing that to sacrifice our personalities and lifestyles seems such a leap. You get fat. You get tired. You stop experimenting with and 'experiencing' life. Instead you start living to protect life. But surely there are many who have grown up in ways that defy that basic element of humanity. And for those whose tastes and fears get the best of them, Rebecca Walker has written a book called Baby Love.

I love babies so much. I love babies so much. I can just write a whole paragraph about loving babies. But I won't. Still, I was distracted by the 14 month old at the back. That's my guess, anyway. He's an adventurous and curious boy. Loving babies is easy, directing children is hard. It takes dedication, but it also takes the mature realization that you have no choice. It's a job you must grow proud of no matter how painful it is. Everyone knows, no matter how many prize winning and brilliant authors we grow, our society cannot endure massive distrust of the business of raising children properly. I expect and hope the young people who heard Walker out will see through their fears. Their children will thank them. They will know.

As for me, my problem is not children nor families. I grew up straight with some very deep understandings about family that became roaringly self-evident to me despite my fascinating young lifestyle. I am completely given over to family and feeling nicely righteous; extra strength is what I feel. I am compelled to protect and serve. It is why I am Conservative. I don't love humanity generically, I watch and respect what people are capable of. I recognize their strengths and weaknesses, in what they do and what they fail to do. People are capable of enormous acts of heroism and tenderness. People are capable of absolute terrifying butchery and savagery. So I'm willing to be bold enough to suggest that the choices many see as their inheritance is not indeed liberty, but unhinged freedom. That knowing what people can do determines some things that some people must do. More heroes please. More tender, heroic parents and leaders please.

I listened to the lyrics to Salt & Pepa's "None of Your Business" last night and I was reminded of the rejection of the idea of a purity ball. I hear that 'It's my life' thing loud and clear. I know why people reject society's opinions. It's a cold, impersonal society out there. People seem to be caught up in minding their own business. But then again a lot of us are minding our own families. There's only so many football games, beach parties, protest marches, shopping malls and book signings you can go to. Public life has its limits; you're not going to get sustaining love out there. That, you have to build yourself.

For all my lefty friends out there, you know this to be true somewhere in your misty minds. You know that there's something awesome about the indigenous woman who gives birth without prepaid health care and prescription drug benefits. Go ahead and admit it. She's more courageous than you. She's more family-oriented than you. She has resisted all of the compelling lifestyle choices you have. She's not trying to juggle the kids, and the Xs, Ys and Zs of your bourgie desire. She falls in love and has babies. Its a good thing. She might even be illiterate and incapable of having a nuanced conversation about a fascinating book about family. But she's got family.

Maybe our society creates the market for psychosis and psychiatry. Some of us are really crazy. But I think most of us just need a shove in the right direction, and assurances that everything is going to be alright. I watched Latigo Flint take himself metaphorically out of the equation. I read about John Perkins' 20 year suicide. I know there are many many young Americans peering into the pool of parenthood, shivering on the deck and deathly afraid of jumping in. I don't want you to take yourselves out. Do it. Give your kid a freaky name and encourage her to pierce her finger-webs and heave a flying bird to the System. Make her even crazier than you, with all that love and sensitivity you have for Gaia. See if you can stand it.

In the meantime the world keeps turning. With or without the healing powers of a thoughtful and generous soul like that of Rebecca Walker, the beat goes on. We brave the dangers and get strength by giving it to our children. My children make me extraordinarily courageous in ways I never imagined I'd be.

February 21, 2007

'Hiring a wife' is necessary. If men and women of high powered marriages are going to have a real home life with children, there is going to have to be a nanny at some point.

At various points my wife and I have been just about every combination from dual wage earner to dual entrepreneur to one each way to me unemployed with her working or her staying at home when I made enough or when I didn't make enough.

There has never been a time when we were both working that we didn't depend on some external resources, from live-in relative, to housekeeper, to babysitter, to day care center. This is a reality of the upper middle class, and I think it is a reality that goes beyond the contemporary back to my sorta-focus on Royalty. In other words there are age-old traditional solutions to these problems and Feminism has just trashed them for egotistical reasons that have distorted a lot of people's basic ideas about family and home life.

I say that the traditional work of nannies, nursemaids, midwives, domestics and cooks of all sorts has been diminished by feminists in American society. In order to give the contemporary woman everything she wants (which is nothing more or less than being a princess), feminism has made a foolish error which is to assert that every woman can be a princess. Oh irony of cruel ironies that they will ultimately discover that in order to accomplish the power and privilege of queens that the bonds of sisterhood will be feudal.

February 17, 2007

I sat at the airport the other day for several hours waiting for my plane. So I experienced one of those rare times when I have to suffer through the unrarified news hours that are the mediocrity of the mainstream. And so I learned that one NBA star dissed another NBA star over some gay thing.

Since the volume was turned down, I could only read the closed caption text of Hardaway as he spoke to the CNN guy outside at night through some pink metal bars, vs those words of the accused Amaechi as he sat in a well-lit studio.

Harsh words were dished out by Hardaway who, said as I read that he's really sorry for the harsh words. Amaechi said that Hardaway had a platform and now that his words were out there and they give license to more hate. This reminds me very much of the soul food incident with Tiger Woods and Fuzzy Zoeller. What I remember was that Tiger said that he got his apology from Zoeller and that was the end of it. This is why Tiger Woods is a better man than this Amaechi character. Woods handled his business and defended himself, whereas Amaechi is seeking for the public to fight in his own behalf.

It doesn't take more than 15 minutes worth of thought that if you are going to be gay, or anti-gay, there are certain ethics of deportment. What we have here is a breach of ethics, not an extraordinary revelation. The NBA players don't want gayness spread all over the place. Gays in the NBA don't want homophobic remarks spread all over the place. So shutup already. Problem solved.

Some would argue that silence hurts the gay player. But isn't that what he's now demanding? Obviously a man to man apology has not sufficed. I'm not in a position to say that Hardaway did or did not offer one, but that's really all that needed to happen. Neither Hardaway nor anyone else on the planet can offer up an apology that is going to satisfy the world of bloviators who wish to make larger points on matters of 'gay relations'. Forget it. The very requirement is, by definition, impossible to meet - which is one of the reasons that gay activists always say (or hope) that the homophobic man is secretly gay and just stupendously conflicted. You will note that you will have to strain your ears to ever hear any gay activists give two beans about whether or not straight women are homophobic. I mean after all, they're just women. If it's fair to say that male homophobes do what they do because of conflicts over their own sexuality, it's equally fair to plumb the psychology of gay men's dismissal of het sex and all that could imply. Whatever to all that, the box we should be playing in is personal offense, personal apology.

So now instead of just a sporto, Amaechi has to be a sex symbol too. Respect the gay sex symbol! Instead of just a sporto, Hardaway has to be a goodwill ambassador. Aww poor babies. You can't always get what you want in the public sphere. Next time keep it to yourselves.

February 13, 2007

I've never been to or even heard of a 'purity ball' until I read this:

"Okay, I'm all for purity and crap like that. Kids, including high school kids, should not be having sex for too many reasons to go into. But things like this are very odd to me. Purity balls are where a father pledges to fight for his daughter's virtue and the girl pledges to her father to keep her virginity until marriage. WTF with making a formal gala out of it? What ever happened to keeping your personal stuff, personal? And your father doesn't own your vagina, so why are you pledging to him? I thought this was a promise to God or yourself. Also, what is this glaring double standard? It's nice and all that you want to keep your daughter pure, but girls don't have sex with themselves. Uhm...well, you know what I mean. What about the boy's purity balls? Okay, that didn't sound right, but you know what I mean there too. Stop putting on the pressure to be virtuous on the girls and stop making a public display of your sexual values." — Angela Winters, black moderate blogger

When I was a single rogue, I would target Angela for down low action. Between you and I, there is nothing like a girl with daddy issues to be a target of seduction. See if her vagina belongs to her, what's she going to do with it? If you're not going to use it and nobody else is, you shouldn't mind if I borrow it for a couple hours a week. Vagina as property. There are so many schemes built on that premise that all the Teddy Pendergrasses in all of the languages of every era couldn't put it to music. But let's get down to cases, shall we?

First things first. The boy's purity ball is the baseball bat in the girl's father's hands. And when pops is sloppy, it's the law. You may have noticed that in the history of the world there have been very few laws on the books that protect men from the sexual predation of women. Sooner or later you people are going to get it, we're not the same. Women need some things. Men need different things. The reason marriage works is because it's a negotiated settlement.

"Making a public display of sexual values" is what everybody does every day when we put on clothing. From an aliens'-eye view of humanity we're just procreating machines are we not?

What I really want to say in all this is that I think it's a very healthy thing to make social events and publicly ritualize values. A purity ball is a good thing for the very same reasons a big church wedding is a good thing. The underlying values are good and the symbolism that it communicates is important. We should do things which underline the value of marrying well which is a phrase I'd like to hear a bit more often in our society.

I read something rather funny in the past few weeks. The guy says "Don't marry for money. Hang around rich girls and marry for love." I can tell you that my folks' advice about marriage could fit inside a box of crackers. A small box.

I was also never the type to go to a lot of weddings as a young single man. I might go as far as to say that I was largely a stranger to the world of weddings. I understood that I wanted to be married, but I spent a great deal of time in pursuit of the woman and not the wedding. I can't say out loud that it was a mistake but it certainly did shape the way most of my single life went. It wasn't until after 30 that I took 'dating' seriously - that is to say it was only in the context of marriage that my single life began to assume a more rational shape. At that particular time in my life I vowed to myself that I wanted to restrain myself from breaking hearts and that I would not kiss any woman that I couldn't see myself marrying. What changed dramatically was the frequency with which I could find and deal with women. It made me more honest and I could break off relationships before they became 'entanglements' which although I managed myself fairly well before, made a very important difference for me and the women as well.

If I haven't said it before, I think there's something radically wrong with boyfriends or girlfriends that hang around in 'relationships' for years although I will admit that it's more radically wrong for young people. I think that the idea that marriage offers nothing more is the primary cause for the preponderance of these strange affairs, and yes I want to get into that from my own arrogant perspective. Although I don't listen to morning radio I've heard enough of the advice shows to know that there's a big market out there for 'relationships'. Me, I like Lykis and Dr. Laura. They are on different sides of the same coin. Lykis slams young people who slide down the slippery slope of live-in relationships and Laura slams wedded people who can't keep their heads on straight about the rules and the consequence of breaking them. Both are in their own way very pro-marriage. They establish a high standard by debunking every half-assed and failing relationship that people rationalize their ways into.

In my defense of marriage and these standards I do not do so to revile those who don't. I will talk smack about you just as I would people who have no sense of style. I will cop a superior attitude when it suits me. I may be above making anything out of it, but I am not above thinking it and I do believe it's reasonable to make social hay out of such. Still there is the formal definition of hubris which is the arrogance to punish people who are already failing. This is what I don't do. I note the failure and I move on. You will notice at Cobb that I don't spend a lot of time talking about relationships and all that. But in this regard, that is to say the extent to which respect for marriage itself and the actions required in preparation for marrying well affect the behavior of single men and women, I do think there is much to be said.

I'm not sure how much causality there is in marrying well when it comes to the Old School project. It's certainly significant but I don't know how much. So I'm not sure whether it's a big deal to talk about it politically.

January 31, 2007

I am a lifelong Roman Catholic, which I realize means I have no intellectual credibility on this issue. However, when our adopted son was 7 or 8, he began watching a PBS program on abortion. We realized very quickly what he was watching and monitored the program very carefully. He watched the entire program. When it was over, he came into the kitchen, looked at the two of us and said: "If my real mommy had had an abortion, I wouldn't be." Rather amazing for a child his age. To this day, he has no question regarding what he thinks about abortion. Neither do we.

It's probably not fair for me to disagree with a child, then again if I didn't somebody else would. That is rather the point. If his mommy had had an abortion, he wouldn't be able to give his parents a post-facto justification for not aborting. But not only that, this is the child speaking from the position of the parent's child. In which case he might have simply been another child with the very same authority; the one not aborted. In either case he is the child, the chosen one, the one that exists. It doesn't matter how he came to exist, his existence justifies his statement, but the weight that the statement carries depends upon the fact that his adoptive parents accept it.

I often think of this paradox with my own children. No matter who their mother is, they would be my children. They cannot possibly be equal to any others who were not born, yet in fact they are, they are the inevitable, and because of that any abortions or secret children any women I might have known biblically are immaterial. They are that they are.

Confused?

How about this way? There is a slot in my future (as of 15 years ago) called 'First Born Son'. It doesn't matter how he comes to be or in what order of sexual encounters or failures. Once he is born, he becomes First Born Son. It's like destiny. The moral question might be, to whom and to what does FBS owe this honor? Should his right to this destiny be compromised by prior abortions? That is to say do people who are born owe some debt to the unborn? Do you? do I? Do anti-abortionists have standing to plead on behalf of the unborn, or are they too compromised because of failed matings which predated their successful birth?

Such are questions which must be answered in describing and defending the rights of the unborn.

This is something we wrestled with in Catholic school. We called it the Question of the Sperm on the Floor.

January 05, 2007

In reading the post on feminism, economy and warfare I recognize immediately that I haven't covered much of any salient aspect of sexuality vis a vis birth control and reproductive freedom. So let me cover that here briefly.

It seems to me that the manner in which Tom Lykis approaches sexuality is really appropriate for questions of sexual freedom. And to the extent that I can accept sex as sport I would have to say that it is an amoral sport between consenting adults. I cannot give it any more significance than that of sport. So it is altogether fitting and proper that we consider prostitution as a professional sport.

I imagine an America in which prostitution is legalized as one in which the value of marriage would be increased immensely. But I have no trust whatsoever in the legal establishment with regard to protecting that value through proper regulation of the sex trade or changes in family law in light of the development. I also think that the demand for same-sex marriage would increase as well.

The effects of sexual liberation and reproductive freedom in an America with a healthy market for legalized prostitution would essentially be nullified. Instead of the sub rosa hooking done by various and sundry liberated females with no appetites or prospects for marriage, it would be the new small business boom, a Silicone Valley. The Tom Lykis show, which essentially reflects the conventional wisdom about extramarital sex, when there is any wisdom to be had on the het side of the equation, would be vindicated in full.

And the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony would remain the same, except people would be forced to take it more seriously since all of their 'relationships' would be shown for what they are: amateur sports.

December 29, 2006

If I were to give you a description of myself in four words, they would be 'Dad, Architect, Writer, Entrepreneur' in that order. That's what I do. More people know me in the context of the third word than any of the others, which is, I suppose, as it should be. But I'm most proud of the work I've done in the first slot - that's my true legacy. This semester the Little Bowens almost hit a trifecta. We got almost three 4.0 GPAs. It was marred by one B+ in math. I just got back from the parent-teacher conferences at the local middle school and one of the teachers practically asked how I did it. So now I think I'm bold enough to share some of the few things I know about being Dad.

I"m just about through with Meg Meeker's book and it's almost shocking how much I get it, and how easily I or any parent can fall prey to believing we are powerless. I have received some simple affirmations about things that I feel in my gut and I am really stunned and relieved. I am stunned to see how far one can get from common sense, and I am relieved to find that all it takes is work, in fact the kind of work I actually like to do. But that's just a small fraction of the equation. If I'm going to enter this trope, I've got to deliver some background.

The hardest thing I ever did in my life was to claim my son as my own.

You see, I'm not married to my son's biological mother, and he was born without the benefits of married parents. It wasn't until he was two years old that he came to live with The Spousal Unit and I, and it wasn't until he was about six or seven that I had gained final custody. He visits his biomom during the summer and holidays and their relationship is improving, but as a father I never had any sense of peace or closure for seven years. But I still remember the day that I decided to take charge of the situation and do whatever I could for the good of my son, and I never looked back, but it wasn't always that way.

I'm not going to spend much time going into the ugly details of the beef I had with Boy's biomom, but I can assure you that people have been murdered for much less. It involved cops, counselors and eventually courts. It involved family, property, work and warrants. It involved criminals, drugs, money and cab rides at 3 in the morning. It involved lawyers, teachers, friends and people in the street. It was a huge, huge hassle. The only thing that kept me going was my absolute certainty that I was going to do right by my boy, but half of the above drama started before I knew she was pregnant. This was a pregnancy that I was told shouldn't happen, happened and was told wouldn't finish, and finished anyway. Trust me, I have heard every single lie it is possible for a woman to tell a man. So there was a long time during which I was planning to have nothing to do with 'it'.

I could not imagine, before Boy was born, how much his life would mean to me. And I could not imagine how difficult it was for me to deal with the hand I had been dealt. But I was playing those cards and I never got dealt a hand I couldn't bluff my way out of. I thought I was invincible. I was 32 years old living in the generation before AIDS and I was never at a loss for company. In fact between the time I was 18 and 32 I had never gone more than six weeks without a mate. I was busy. Too busy.

Once I finished my own pity party and began to look to the welfare of my own flesh and blood, things became crystal clear. I am one of the fortunate fathers who was able to demonstrate to the courts that the best interests of the child lay primarily with me. I have met others as well, an interesting fraternity. These days Boy is doing sterlingly well, and one of the things I intend to do is to send an update to the officers of the Family Court that helped me in my personal battle to make my family right.

Every parent has a number of struggles that they must endure for the benefit of the integrity their family. I just wanted to share a bit of joy and pain.

December 12, 2006

Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute, home to our friend McWhorter and other moderate conservatives, has nailed it. Her focus on marriage and its affects on the well being of people (not just children) is spot on and refreshing. Moreover she correctly identifies the 'Unmarriage Revolution'.

There's no question that there were a number of impersonal forces at work in upending the family - the pill, which gave women control over reproduction, affluence, which made marriage less essential for mere survival, and of course, the mass movement of women into the labor market, which allowed women greater independence.

But there is also no doubt that the unmarriage revolution was in large measure a product of dubious ideas. Idealists of the 1960's imagined that if you could free individuals from traditional modes of being and traditional institutions, they could experience life more directly, more "ecstatically" as Hillary Clinton put it in her famous Wellesley graduation speech. Adding to the anti-marriage movement was the belief among feminists that marriage was the source of female inequality. Simone de Beauvoir called it "an obscene bourgeois institution," (a description I agree with, by the way, if you take out the "obscene") and as we all know, Betty Friedan, referred to it as a "comfortable concentration camp." To be a wife was to be confined in a stereotype straightjacket that severely limited women's individual potential, as well as keeping them under male control.

This is precisely what I've been talking about. Once again we must reconsider Moynihan. Although I did that without a defense of marriage itself in mind, such matters are much more clear to me now. Hymowitz goes on to speak about the familiar devastation to black families.

Given the legacy of slavery that made marriage impossible for blacks and Jim Crow laws that emasculated men, the unmarriage revolution was bound to hit blacks especially hard. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his controversial report "The Negro Family", he was warning the country about a 25% illegitimacy rate among blacks. In one chapter of my book, I tell the story of how black leaders and black and white academics accused Moynihan of every sin in the p.c. book. He was a racist who could not possibly understand "the strengths of the black family." He was a sexist who failed to appreciate the "strong black woman" and her "extended kinship networks." It became impossible to have an honest conversation about what was happening in the black community for the next twenty years even as black welfare rolls, crime rates, and teen births were soaring.

Well, now the rupture between marriage and black childbearing is just about complete. Seventy percent of black births are to single mothers. Seventy percent. This has had a disastrous effect on men, who have lost their major social roles as provider and father. It is also a tragedy for the country because it makes the goal of full black equality unachievable. Growing up in single parent homes, black kids are destined to stay behind.

Dead right. Read the whole thing.

The difference and the distance between black partisans who were interested in raising the race and white liberal counterculturalists ought to be clear and profound. To the extent that brotherhood was a component of the black consciousness revolution we were more about building strong relationships than tearing them down. In the 70s when Warren Beatty was making movies about free love, we were fantasizing about how cool it would be if Huey and Angela would hook up. The entire phenomenon that was Roots underscored black need to feel connected to family. But something went horribly wrong with the nexus between white liberals and black radicals. Could it be that we also wanted Clarence Williams to abandon his black woman for Peggy Lipton? Hard to say.

Here's what I will say which is consistent with what I've been saying. The ability for white controlled media to skew the accurate portrayal of a normal black family far outstripped black ability to communicate its value. Perhaps in a rush to join the integrated world, or just to leave the segregated world, too many black men and women left their old family values too, thinking that this was the new American way. It was, but it was also very wrong, and now far too many are paying the price.

I was among those who chuckled during the culture wars at Reaganite champions of 'family values'. But I was single, childless and advancing my career. For me it was all about economic advancement. What I saw that blackfolks needed more than anything else was an economic base of substance. Well, I don't write family values in quotes any longer. They are real values with important consequences that cannot be downplayed, and I say they are central to the prospects of African Americans. Black people persist, but black families are challenged. Blackfolks will survive, but without marriage we will not advance or sustain those advances.

October 25, 2006

RENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - Saying that times have changed, New
Jersey's highest court on Wednesday guaranteed gay couples the same
rights as married heterosexual couples but left it to state lawmakers
to define how the state wants to define marriage.

"Times and
attitudes have changed," the New Jersey State Supreme Court said in a
nuanced 90-page ruling that was neither a clear victory nor a defeat
for gay marriage, which is currently legal in the United States only in
Massachusetts.

"Despite the rich diversity of this State, the
tolerance and goodness of its people, and the many recent advances made
by gays and lesbians toward achieving social acceptance and equality
under the law, the Court cannot find that the right to same-sex
marriage is a fundamental right under our constitution," the ruling
continued.

But saying that gay couples must have the same rights as other
couples, the court said gay advocates must now "appeal to their fellow
citizens whose voices are heard through their popularly elected
representatives."

With that in mind, the court gave the
legislature six months to either amend the state's marriage statutes to
include gay people, or write a new law in which same-sex couples "would
enjoy the rights of civil marriage."

As you might presume, I am against gay marriage, in the same way I am against human rights for animals. Misinterpret what as you may but they are apples and oranges. The very declaration of being gay is OK, but don't call it marriage. So I think this decision, from the way it is reported here, is exactly the proper ruling for a court. Defend civil liberties, but leave it to the people to determine the social acceptability of the declaration. Once again, I have no problem with the state acknowledging and defending civil unions, and I think the precedent for matters such as medical benefits, etc is well established in the law. But don't call it marriage.

I hope that the people of NJ recognize the importance of recognizing the difference between the civil and statutory definitions of civil union and the social convention of marriage and that they uphold the status quo with regard to the current definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. It is the people's right to decide, as I've said before we all have a say in these matters. By not being activist and establishing gay marriage by legal fiat, the NJ judiciary did the right thing, and they should be commended.

Key Language: (emphasis mine)

Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed samesex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.

October 23, 2006

"There is marriage and there is everything else. Everything else doesn't count."-- Cobb

Once upon a time I used to spend a lot of time talking about 'dating' in the context of black men and women. I guarantee you that there are few things that generate so much hot air and energy on this planet as that debate. Just avoiding the necessity to engage in it is a good reason to be married.

Jimi has patience for it, as I suppose must everyone who hasn't done the proper deed. Check out this exerpt:

..My ex was shady but our chemistry was off the chain.

>So let me get this straight: he was shady—a quality that
many suggest occurs in heart and mind of folks—yet, you all had great
chemistry? I don't follow. By shady, do you mean he was a street nigga
with street ways? That he was a street hustler?<

Nah, man he was legit I'm a lawyer, I can't hang out with someone who
was a street hustler, He had street ways. I didn't really understand
how shady he was until much later in the relationship. So we tried to
make it work through 2002 until 2005 when I discovered that he stole
from me. I had tons of CDs and when I was packing them up I realized
that I was missing a bunch of them, what hurt is when I asked him about
it, he lied and then admitted it but then said they were just CDs and
that I should get over it because our relationship was worth more than
CDs and that if I was a real Christian I would forgive him. The way he
tried to disregard my feelings of betrayal and distrust by saying it is
just a bunch of CDs. The whole situation told me that this was a man
who would always disregard my feelings and do what he wanted to me in
the name of our love. I couldn't stick around for another shoe to drop.

I'm going to tell you something harsh. If it takes you three years in 'a relationship' to tell if somebody is worth your hand in marriage, I think you're a very poor judge of character, or just straight out shallow.

But in this case, I think there is a very strong exception, but it's still dysfunctional. I speak of this because I was on the same track, which was the track to find a New World African mate of globetrotting potential. In otherwords, a black trophy wife. Somebody like...hmm... this woman.

You see, when you buy into this game, of finding somebody who will make you flip in bed, that will make you look good at society functions, makes their own Nordstrom shopping money, and has a brain the size of Massachusetts, your blackified social world shrinks to the size of Pee Wee Herman's gonads, in winter, ice-fishing, naked, with a fan on. Consequently, you cannot afford to be relatively ho-fied, nor relatively exclusive. It's a no-win situation. Why? 'Because the good ones are already taken'. And so you're forced to make excuses to keep looking and keep looking for somebody black who doesn't disappoint you, and they're looking at you with the same colored eyeglasses on. The war of expectations is crushing as is the weight of the baggage.

For the third time in the past couple months, I found myself out chowing and drinking with single friends. The topic of conversation drifted to The Chase, and once again I found myself driving home at somewhere past midnight thanking God that I don't have to deal with that world. In the latest particular installment, the friends didn't happen to be black, but the subtext was the same. I don't trust any woman well enough to marry her.

The trick is simple. You don't trust the woman, and you don't trust the man, you trust the marriage. It is only the mutual willingness to trust the institution of marriage that is going to get you out of this trap of trusting some other mortal human with your love, respect and money. But the problem is, as these friends know, there's all kinds of legal and emotional finagling that can be done. The men want to do the legal finagling to keep their money, and the women want to do the emotional finagling to keep their sanity. And so the conversation turned to prenups. I tried to be helpful, but I was kind of discounted. I'm the guy with the successful marriage, the one with the good kids. But it's very hard to explain to people that I love my woman less than I respect my marriage. It means I will sacrifice my personal happiness on the alter of Marriage. It's something you know subconsciously from watching married couples talk smack about each other in public, but you never want to admit. Single people say, I never want us to be like that. Well then you won't be, you'll be divorced and looking for somebody new to make you happy.

And that's the thing. You don't need to be married to make you happy. Marriage won't make you romantically happy most of the time. Marriage makes you fulfilled by fulfilling the requirements of marriage, and marriage is not about romatic happiness. You can have that without the rings. But you have to have the leap of faith and the committment to principles in order to work that.

I have been surprised by the number of different variations on marriage vows and ceremonies that are blessed by the various faiths. I don't know how to explain how this variety evolved, but I would guess that they are in response to the demands of romantic love, the advent of birth control and the laws of community property. In each way, there's some way to cheat, to make the cliff of marriage a little less steep, and therefore the consumability of it more approachable. You can have a marriage like you have a mortgage, or a car, or a job. Permanent, but disposable for a price. And so long as you can hedge a marriage, you can hedge a relationship headed towards marriage.

I used to ask The Questions.

Are you exlusive with me?

Do you love me?

Do you want to live with me?

Do you want to marry me?

Do you want to have kids with me?

If all of the answers weren't yes, then I could just enjoy the 'relationship', which meant I could pursue my own version of happiness and not really worry so much about hers. But after a time, I got to the point that I didn't want to be in the position of constantly being the heartbreaker. I would go into bars and clubs and say to myself, I'm not even going to talk to a woman I couldn't see marrying. Because I knew how it was going to go. After you become a master at seduction, once you're in the game, you know how it goes. It always comes down to The Questions.

If the answers were all yes, then I'd have to choose. Which meant I had to have all my crap together. And that was tough to face, but when I turned 29, that had to be the plan. It turned out that I married the woman whose breakup forced me to come up with the plan. Because for her, the answers were yes, and I didn't have my game together - not internally to my own mind. I wasn't quite the man I thought I needed to be to be able to say after all those yeses, "Then I'm your man."

Timing, they say, is everything. And I tend to agree. Like going for a masters degree, or deciding to put on 12 pounds of muscle, there are certain committments that only make sense to pursue while they still capture your imagination. If you hang around with people who have done it too long, their gritty reality and disappointment can sour you forever. I think you ought to pay serious attention to your biological clock. I think that if seeing a happy married couple pushing their baby around in a stroller makes you envious, then you need to get while the getting is good. You only have one chance to have your first child.

I could go on and on but I won't. It's a personal subject and Cobb is not all about me, only partially about me. But I'd be happy to get into this discussion about you.

September 07, 2006

I've been asked to consider the validity and implications of several myths about black males. I may even talk about it on radio or television some day. So as per usual, I will kick out my gut feelings and get socratic and analytical on these issues of concern.

But let me start with an overall angle, and that is that there is a sigificant problem with coming at 'black males' from this perspective. I resent the whole anthropological tone, and it really grits my teeth when I hear somebody announce that, 'I am a black male..' or 'the black female needs...' It reads like a pet manual. That said, both of my parents were sociologists by training, and I know where all that is coming from. We started it. One of these days we're going to end it.

The first myth, as you might have guessed from the title, I will paraphrase in the following way. "The black male exhibits a preturnatural ability to sire multiple offspring without exhibiting domestic responsibilities." Or as a rapper might put it, 'I hate to bang and blow, but yo I gotta go'.

Is this a myth? No. Is it a rule of thumb? No. Is it the default expectation in American society? That's a bit tougher to say, but I think I'm going to have to say yes it is. What do the statistics say? According to Shay Riley at Booker Rising (who gets her numbers from very reliable sources) we are:

8.8 million families: 52% single parent (43% single women, 9%
single men), 48% married. 9% of black kids live with grandparents
(1940: 77% married, 18% single women, 5% single men)

I have to say that I'm down with Daniel Patrick Moynihan on this issue which is tangential to the abortion and adoption issues. Kids raised in married families have advantages. The strong black Old School position is, get married, stay married. I mean you really have to ask why it would be that blackfolks who are in The Struggle, would think of it as an advantage to raise kids singly. If you're trying to be middle class, it should be obvious that two parents are better than one, and that Marriage is better than shacking. I listen to Destiny's Child and I say, of course I can pay your bills. That's what a man does.

We still have understanding of the term 'living in sin'. The stigma hasn't fallen completely away. Legally, there used to be different laws of inheritance and different laws for the roles and responsibilities of parents. But you know sociologists can't leave well enough alone. So the legal basis for discrimination against bastards is gone. You can't even say that word with its original meaning intact. But the moral injuction is still real and ought to be respected.

America is not quite comfortable with the Old School black father. But you know that's what Earl Woods was like. You know that's what Colin Powell is like. You know that's the role Charles Dutton played in 'Roc'. It's none of this 'Everybody Loves Raymond' wishy-washy stuff. It's about standing tall and being the force of stability, honor and discipline that a black father must be. And half of us are doing the right thing. I would, quote frankly, like to break those demographics down by class too. It's something I suspect Roland Fryer or one of the Freakonomics crew may have done. Bottom line, married black fatherhood is threatened, but the opposition will fall apart. We will be the survivors because we have the confidence that comes with the righteousness of doing the right thing, and we will pass it on.

I could go on into the reasons that the failure of the family has occured in America, but I really don't want to go there. Rather I want to emphasize and underscore the need for strong families of the traditional sort, and challenge those of us who hold to that ideal to remain strong and intact. I'm looking forward, and learning what advantages I have as my wife and I plan for and work our family.

We know, and everyone should know the simple fact, if you're raising children, follow Cobb's Rule #2 There is Marriage, and then there is everything else. I very much like the way it's put in this very relevant article by Kay Hymowitz:

Read through the megazillion words on class, income mobility, and poverty in the recent New York Times
series “Class Matters” and you still won’t grasp two of the most basic
truths on the subject: 1. entrenched, multigenerational poverty is
largely black; and 2. it is intricately intertwined with the collapse
of the nuclear family in the inner city.

By now, these facts shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Almost 70 percent of
black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more
likely than married mothers to be poor, even after a
post-welfare-reform decline in child poverty. They are also more likely
to pass that poverty on to their children. Sophisticates often try to
dodge the implications of this bleak reality by shrugging that single
motherhood is an inescapable fact of modern life, affecting everyone
from the bobo Murphy Browns to the ghetto “baby mamas.” Not so; it is a
largely low-income—and disproportionately black—phenomenon. The vast
majority of higher-income women wait to have their children until they
are married. The truth is that we are now a two-family nation, separate
and unequal—one thriving and intact, and the other struggling, broken,
and far too often African-American.

Note that the author doesn't pretend that it's a black problem. It is an American problem that is more hurtful to poor blackfolks in the ghetto. It's only a black problem to the extent that black politics is responsible for saying "I ain't mad at ya" to those who embrace single parenthood. If the goal of black politics is to be the preservation and uplift of the African American nation, then it cannot turn a blind eye to this problem, nor can it equivocate on matters of family structure. But a certain stream of black politics has constantly done so, just as it has on matters of drugs and crime. It makes excuses instead of just saying no. It gets all crafty with its rationales, but it cannot do so in the case of family matters without denial of Moynihan which is what Hymowitz sees so clearly.

You really have to read Hymnozitz' entire piece, it has an extraordinarily comprehensive tracing of the provenance of the shaky arguments pitched against Moynihan. And I should note to black partisans that Moynihan was building on the work Kenneth Clark and E. Franklin Frasier. This also relates directly to The Underclass Question I posed. I have been hesitant, due to the influence of Glenn Loury's analysis, to place the primary variable of the Underclass directly in the home, but it does make sense to locate it there. Where, after all, does social indigency come from? The streets, is probably the best answer. And why would a married family be at the mercy of the streets in terms of the values they teach their children. It simply defies what we know to be true about married black fathers. How can any self-respecting black man stand up and say that 'the legacy of slavery' rules what goes on in my house?

Along with Cosby, I throw shade against the Forty Percent.. those below the middle class who don't appear to be holding up their end of the bargain. The Civil Rights Movement was a success. We destroyed Jim Crow, but you can't take blackfolks to the next level if you as a man haven't handled your own business at home. And for this, I'm convinced there is no government cure, and nothing politics can do but preach. We can't have people coming around to police how black men handle their social relationships. That's all on us.

As my father used to say: "But me no buts". Just handle your business. Let me make it unequivocably clear, the black men who don't marry are the ones destroying the Black Family, their own.

June 22, 2006

Neal has a new blurble up on NPR. It's kinda wack because it sounds like it was cut and paste together. But I could see why a college professor would have to do so. I would expect that someone in his position is considerably smarter than his sound-sandwich makes him sound. Then again, it is an NPR sound-blurble. Nobody expects it to be scholarly material.

Still, it hurts my head to hear the term 'civil rights' bandied about so readily and often. So whenever I hear the term, I try to immediately think of Judge Johnson and all of the case law around race. This reminds me, much to my delight, of the wisdom of relying on 'activist judges' in making the case for civil liberty - that it was not all sit-ins and marches and shouting and throwing bricks that made the difference. That very fact, which is so often elided when we talk about 'The Struggle', is what give me comfort. The American system changed within the framework of the republic by demonstration in case after case that denial of civil rights to any fragment of its population was corrosive to liberty.

You would think that this real judicial example would be enough. So why does Mark Anthony Neal care whether or not 'the black community' supports the agenda for every sexual perversion to be considered equal? I don't know. The burble doesn't get that specific. But I have my suspicions. They are as they always have been, which is that we become accepting of the lifestyle of the sexual smorgasborg. It's a typical liberal overproduction. It's not about civil rights, it's about social power. I haven't followed this up, for one because the entire subject annoys me. But I'd bet a nickel that judges are, by and large perfectly happy to determine that within the scope of the Civil Rights laws of this country that discrimination against people because of their sexual proclivities is out of bounds. Or simply stated, all the freaks *have* all their rights. When they go to court, they win. I welcome any activist for the gay cause to prove me wrong. If you ask me, there *is* no equivalent of the Dred Scott or Plessy decisions as far as gays are concerned. Gay Americans are not legally oppressed, they are socially oppressed, and they can't stand it.

Legal oppression is not what this activism is all about. It is about appropriating the moral figleaf of the rhetoric of 'Civil Rights'. If there's anything made perfectly clear about Neal's burble, it is that everybody appropriates rhetoric and street tactics. So why not the lesbians, gays, transsexuals and transgenders? Who's stopping them? They already have. The thing they can't appropriate is Marriage, and the majority of Americans (this time) wisely has put its collective foot down.

Do we need a Constitutional Amendment sized foot in the ass of the politics of gay appropriation? I don't think so. I'm against using the Supreme Court for such matters. So I think Rove is just as off his nut for his suggestion to abuse the court system as the gay blades are for downplaying their equality in standing before it. But if this kind of sabre-rattling is what's necessary to get a rise out of bloggers such as myself, it's working.

How about this? Why don't we mandate that gays get a rainbow flag tatooed on their foreheads? That way we know and can properly adjust our gaydar. Then we can actually demonstrate our political correctness correctly. I mean if you're here and you're queer, why not let us all know, for real? On the other hand, why don't all gays just buy wedding rings and pretend that they're married anyway? Then we can actually demonstrate our respect for marriage correctly. You see? Either way there's a lie, and the lie is that Marriage is the same and LBGTT folks are all about the same values - something any halfway honest two minute conversation would disabuse.

I think the bottom line in any case is honesty and not symbolism and appropriation. We know some huge fragment of the population is gay and we know that any red blooded fraction of that fragment is ready willing and able to fight for what they rightly deserve in a free and open society. So let's just stop pretending that everybody is the same and that all these relationships are based on the same premises as Holy Matrimony. I say stand up in court for your rights, and stop bragging about your sexual exploits in the process. Nobody wants to hear it. Or if you must, then say somebody smacked you upside the head because you're a felcher, or that somebody refused to rent to you because you said you're a bottom boy on the application. But stop trying to get on board a movement whose motion has already moved. Write your own letter from a Birmingham jail.

April 27, 2006

"For men, being married is like playing Simon Says for the rest of your life, and you never get to be Simon".-- Jay Leno

A couple years ago Kim DuToit wrote a controversial article about the defanging of the American male. Although I actually prefer his term, I'm not sure that I want to repeat it here at Cobb. Although I generally agree with the sentiment that du Toit had a little bit too much to prove, he was onto something.

I watched 'Walk the Line' for the first time and cannot forget the exchange between two women in the grocery store.

I'm trying to think of any example in life where Americans would level such criticisms at each other in public life. Not only to dish it out, but to take it with the appropriate humility. It's the most stunning exchange in the entire film and I think I understand it perfectly.

What the characters in that film understand better than most of us do is that marriage is not a respecter of persons. When a man and a woman enter into marriage, they should respect each other, but they should respect their marriage even more. To respect your woman because she demonstrates {list of things contemporary liberated women are supposed to be respected} certain attributes is nothing more nor less than a real friendship. But to respect your woman because she is your wife represents a whole new level. I think it is a level that many married couples must eventually reach, but we are not doing our share as a society to help them understand that. I don't believe that it is anything that requires exclusively religious faith, but we have certainly been reduced to a society in which few others than the religiously faithful defend the principles and purposes of marriage.

So it's rediculous but apt to compare marriage to a game of Simon Says. Why? Because men don't know how to be husbands and women don't know how to be wives. And in a marginally post-feminist society in which 'liberators' who are nothing more than libertines keep producing most of the popular pap, we are overcome by false messages of male submission in marriage. Marriage, so goes the popular myth, makes women less womanly and men less manly. It only improves the standing of gays and lesbians. Of course that's perverse, but it's what makes Jay Leno funny.

And so we pay lip service to jokes about what men must inevitably suffer through and hearing truth in it, mistake that for Truth. We shrug off the inevitability of it all, and then half of us spend half our lives with The Abomination. Some would say divorce is as inevitable as obesity and heart disease. I think it's time that healthy people grab the mic.

So let me state the obvious. A good marriage makes a man stronger and a woman stronger. The act of submission is to Marriage, not simply of weak men to catty women. There is no truth to the essentialism of feminine power that rises from within women during marriage. That dysfunction is nothing more or less than a bad marriage.

August 23, 2005

Walking the chalkline I expect, California seems to be doing the right thing. Who can say if they are for the right reasons? The WaPo reports:

The state's custody and child support laws that hold absent parents accountable also apply to estranged gay and lesbian couples who used reproductive science to conceive, the high court ruled Monday.

Being a legal parent "brings with it the benefits as well as the responsibilities," said Justice Joyce Kennard.

The decision comes a month after the justices ruled that a California domestic partner law grants gays and lesbians who register with the state many of the same rights as married couples, but does not allow them to marry.

It makes for a rather disturbing test case, considering that one of the women had a kind of strange pre-nup.

Lower courts and dissenting justices noted the woman, K.M., voluntarily signed a document declaring her intention not to become a parent of any resulting children, and should not be granted parental status.

So let's get this straight. One of the members of this lesbian couple said, hey I love you but we ain't raising no babies together, and tried to contractually wiggle her way out of the responsibilities of parenthood even though she went throught the trouble to be an egg donor. She was busted by the state. The state did the right thing by the child, despite the fact that the poor baby has at least one asshole of a parent.

I'm not saying this is typical, I'm saying this is real. So let's hear the common sense reaction. Should these people be married?